An episode of the new Netflix series Historical Roasts mocks Anne Frank with one-liners, angering some viewers, particularly in the Netherlands, where the teen diarist hid from the Nazis.
Top comedians mock historical figures in the series, which was released Monday on the streaming service.
Among the roasters of Anne Frank, played by actress Rachel Feinstein, are Adolf Hitler (played by Gilbert Gottfried) and President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Jon Lovitz). All three performers are Jewish.
“Everyone knows you as a hero and a best-selling author, but to me you’ll always be little number 825060,” Gottfried, as Hitler, says to Anne. He also says, “Of all the accounts that I’ve read, Anne, your book is by far the most flammable.”
Host Jeff Ross, who is Jewish, wears a yellow star of David armband and acknowledges that “genocides continue to take place around the world.”
“If you’re offended by anything you see tonight,” says Ross, “just do what FDR did and look the other way.”
Anne’s character says life “sucked” in the attic, so, “I made dirty jokes, I mocked things, and through all that pain, I still laughed because that’s what the Jews do.” She calls on viewers to contact Netflix “and ask them why there are 5,000 documentaries about Hitler and none about me.”
The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam called the show “tasteless satire.” The Information and Documentation Centre on Israel, a Dutch anti-Semitism watchdog, in a tweet said the comedy was “unwelcome.” The tweet also says “it is sometimes forgotten that there are survivors and that traumas live on in other generations.”
Viewers, many in the Netherlands, tweeted their anger and disgust at the episode, some threatening to cancel their subscriptions.
Historical figures roasted in other episodes include Freddie Mercury of the band Queen, Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
