Henry Gonshak - Hollywood and the Holocaust

FILM AND HISTORY

Series Editor: Cynthia J. Miller

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Hollywood and the Holocaust, by Henry Gonshak

Henry Gonshak

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gonshak, Henry, 1958

Hollywood and the Holocaust / Henry Gonshak. pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4422-5223-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4422-5224-0 (ebook)

1. Holocaust, Jewish (19391945), in motion pictures. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (19391945)Influence. 3. Motion picturesUnited StatesHistory20th century. 4. Motion picturesUnited StatesHistory21st century. I. Title.

PN1995.9.H53G66 2015

791.43'658dc23

2015016263

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Hollywood and the Holocaust could never have been written without the assistance of my late father, Irwin Gonshak. My father began his career as a social studies teacher at a New York City junior high school, but his real love was for educational and dramatic radio. For many years, he worked as a script writer for WNYE-FM, the official radio station of the New York City Public School System. My father read the New York Times every day of his adult life, and he must have read with scissors in hand, because he sent me literally thousands of articles, from the Times and elsewhere, which proved vital to my research. My student assistant, Pat Wright, also deserves my thanks for undertaking the laborious task of organizing and filing all those clippings.

My father also found me dozens of books on the Holocaust, many of which became sources for this work. A great supporter of locally owned bookstores, he ordered all these books through Buttes own independent store, Books & Books. Every time we talked on the phone, my father would ask if I needed new books and often had books to recommend. Although he defined himself as a secular humanist, my father never lost his intimate connection to cultural and ethnic Judaism. Indeed, my father was a Jewish scholar in his own right. As a young man, he wrote scripts for the radio program The Eternal Light, a Jewish dramatic show, which happened to be the first American media outlet to broadcast the story of Anne Frank. Many of the books used for Hollywood and the Holocaust were simply plucked off the shelves of my fathers personal library, which included an extensive collection of Judaica. My only sadness is that my father didnt live long enough to see this book in print. But my memories of him permeate every page.

I would also like to thank the institution where Ive taught English for the last twenty-five years: Montana Tech in Butte. My college awarded me a sabbatical, which I spent working on this book. Let me also thank the US Fulbright Program, which allowed me to spend the 20082009 school year teaching Jewish-American literature as well as the Holocaust in American film at the University of Wroclaw in Poland. My light teaching load left me plenty of time to engage in on-site research about the Holocaust in Poland. As part of that endeavor, I gave a paper at a Holocaust conference at Jagiellonian University in Krakow. It was during this conference that I first visited Auschwitz.

As well, Id like to thank the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, where I not only spent many hours wandering through its information-packed exhibits but also did research for the book in the museums extensive library for scholars. Additionally, my thanks go out to the Jentel Artist Residency Program in Sheridan, Wyoming, where I devoted a month to working on this book.

Among the editors at Rowman & Littlefield, I worked most closely with Cynthia Miller, editor of the publishers Film and History series, in which this book appears. Throughout the lengthy process of bringing Hollywood and the Holocaust into print, Miller was a wonderful editor: knowledgeable, meticulous, steadfast, and kind.

Finally, thanks to my wife, Nancy Coughlin, who worked with me from start to finish. Though all errors of fact and judgment are, of course, my own, Nancy edited two full drafts of this book, sentence by sentence, word by word. Nancy has the literary equivalent of perfect pitch in music: she has a remarkable gift for revision. I dedicate this book to her, as well as to my wonderful daughter, Rebecca Gonshak, with all my heart.

This book is a study of fictionalized representations of the Jewish Holocaust in Hollywood movies from the World War II era up to the present day. Its premise is quite simple: for better or worse, the average American (as well as millions internationally) generally learns about the Holocaust not through history books, documentary films, or serious works of literature and cinema but rather through Hollywood portrayals (along with other examples of mass media, such as commercial television, popular fiction, and Broadway plays). What happened during the Holocaust, why it happened, whether it can happen again, what lessons should be drawn from the genocidewhatever answers ordinary people find to these vital questions have been determined predominantly by popular culture, with its primary branch being Hollywood, which both shapes and reflects public attitudes in a complex dynamic. For most Americans, Schindlers List isnt about the Holocaust; it