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What horror tropes can teach us about online culture and the politics of Holocaust remembrance
BY MICHAEL FRAIMAN
PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE SERIES HOLOCAUST DREAM , BY DANIEL EHRENWORTH
I don’t need to remind anyone that 2020 was a strange year. Some of the stuck-at-home taught themselves to bake sourdough. Others took up knitting. Many spent an extra hour per week waiting in socially-distanced queues outside grocery stores. Me? I wrote a 159-page audio drama script about Holocaust victims rising from mass graves as zombies. Before you get offended, let me explain. One month after the World Health Organ- ization declared a global pandemic, The Canadian Jewish News—at least for a time —closed up shop. But it wasn’t long after
know where the idea came from, or why nobody had come up with it before, really.) The plot, which takes place in the near fu- ture, centres on a young Canadian woman, Kat, undergoing a quarter-life crisis; she drops out of university to travel to Ger- many and meet her late Jewish father’s estranged family. There, she accompanies her cousins to visit a nearby concentration camp, where news reports have alleged graverobbing vandals were digging up the mass graves of Holocaust victims. Kat and her cousins are among the first to learn the truth: it isn’t graverobbers disturbing these burial sites, but zombies emerging
the old familiar weekly newspaper shut down that a core group of former employ- ees, myself included, began discussions about reviving The CJN in a newer, bolder, digital-first format, focusing on deep re- search and innovative storytelling. I was charged with spearheading the nascent podcast department. And since The CJN would take a few months to get back on its feet, and the pandemic ensured I had ample spare time, I did something I hadn’t tried in a decade: creative writing. I began with a concept that felt fittingly eyebrow-raising for The New CJN: Holo- caust victims rising as zombies. (No, I don’t
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