Shameless: Exploiting the Holocaust

In novels, film and popular culture, the Holocaust genre is booming. Streaming hits and bestsellers are playing a vital role in shaping understandings of the past.

But, as Tanya Gold shows in this crucial essay, the creators of these works all too often engage in a crass and self-serving exercise in exploitation. In this new wave of Shoah blockbuster, the destruction of the Jews becomes a plot device or a ready-made backdrop - and the truths of history and of the dead are violated. The results, in many cases, are shameful fictions that desecrate the past and misrepresent the Jewish people of today.

Shameless is a moral wake-up call: it shows that there are some artists who treat the Holocaust honestly, and they disgrace those who do not.