Despite Theodore Adorno’s famous remark that ‘writing poetry after Aushwitz is
barbaric,’ the Jewish Holocaust has remained a subject for not only poets, but
novelists, painters and film-makers to this decade. There has been an ongoing
fascination with this particular example of extreme, sustained and organised
cruelty and the stories of survival in conditions of mass psychological and
physical torture. ‘Life is Beautiful’ (Roberto Benigni, 1998) does not simply
denounce Nazism and Fascism, but shows how the conditions inside the
concentration camps revealed and reinforced the tenacity of certain human
qualities and the strength of familial bonds.’