[ID: a series of tweets by @/SketchesbyBoze they read:
"I review books for a living, and Iâve noticed a worrying trend of what I call âinstagramming the Holocaust.â (1 / 9)"
"Bestselling novels about the Holocaust tend to be âupliftingâ and sentimental. They have romantic subplots. Jewish characters only exist to be rescued by the (often American) protagonist. The cinematic, three-act structure culminates in a redemptive ending."
"What these books offer (and they sell in the millions) is a sanitized version of the Shoah in which brave Americans bravely battle Hitler, the reader learns a lesson about Kindness and Not Being Prejudiced, and there are no sticky questions about who did the killings, and why."
"Jewish novelist Dara Horn has observed that memoirs and novels written by actual Holocaust survivors typically donât sellâbecause there are no pat resolutions, no redemptions, no heartwarming moments where the Jewish prisoners see the good in their Nazi captors."
"Anne Frankâs (excellent) diary became the entry point into the Holocaust for most of us because she had not yet experienced the worst of it â because she hadnât yet learned that some people arenât âtruly good at heart.â Itâs just safe enough not to disturb us."
"And we love âupliftingâ Holocaust novels because we donât want to be disturbed, not really. This is the real reason why books like Maus offend the sensibilities of middle-class parents, because they bear witness to a truth about human nature that we donât want to confront."
"And the âmessageâ of the Holocaust is not that people are truly good, or that we need to be kind and tolerant (though that is true). The message is that six million people were murdered, and millions of ordinary folk were complicit, and millions of others looked away."
"This compulsion to sanitize the past, to sanitize the world, is one of the overlooked roots of white nationalism. We want to seal ourselves away from the experiences of others because we fear what they might say to us. We want reality to be pastel-hued and instagram-filtered."
"If you feel the need to shield your children from history thatâs upsetting and âinappropriate,â examine yourself. If you need your stories to have positive morals and tidy endings, examine yourself. If you live in a pastel bubble, examine yourself, because the bubble is toxic." end ID.]