This chapter makes the claim that twenty-first century Holocaust humor on
TV, which is much more significant in terms of quantity than in the 1990s,
follows in the footsteps of themes introduced in The Chamber Quintet’s skits,
but also addresses topics that were not broached in the 1990s, thus expanding
the scope of Holocaust humor on TV.
2
The focus of this chapter is mainly on
examples taken from contemporary TV satires, to better highlight the trajectories Holocaust humor in TV satire has taken since the 1990s. The first three
sections of the chapter show how current TV satires continue to critique the
acting out of the trauma by collective memory agents, the politicization and
instrumentalization of the Holocaust by Israeli politicians and public figures, and
castigate organized trips to the former concentration camps in Poland, all of
which are themes that appeared in The Chamber Quintet skits. Each of these
sections begins with the description of a skit by The Chamber Quintet on the
subject and then one example (out of many) of its more recent incarnations on
TV. The subsequent sections deal with Holocaust humor, satire and parody that
appear on contemporary TV but were not part of The Chamber Quintet’s repertoire, including using Holocaust associations to critique other topics like social
issues, the shallowness of the Israeli public and popular culture; addressing the
combination of Holocaust commemoration and the Israeli ethnic conflict; and
introducing Holocaust jokes aimed at slaughtering the sacred cow of the trauma
in Israeli culture