DETROIT SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA PRESENTS has lost much of its shock value, some pub- lishers are apparently still uncomfortable with this oil-and-water mixture. Amis' longtime publishers in France and Germany rejected the manuscript for The Zone of Interest, according to the New York Times; Amis told the Times that his German publisher cited "inconsistencies in the plot" and found one Nazi officer too sympathetic to the Nazi cause. Other, smaller publishers in those coun- tries, and in other parts of Europe, as well as in Canada and Brazil, will bring out the book in 2015. In recent years, Holocaust humor has come under study in university courses; a growing number of college students are writing theses on various aspects of how the survivors, and victims, used humor as a form of psychological catharsis and spiri- tual resistance. And it will be the subject of a forthcom- ing 2015 documentary, The Last Laugh, by New York filmmakers Ferne Pearlstein and Robert Edwards. But as the legacy of the Shoah passes from the generation of the survivors and their children to the survivors' grand- children and great-grandchildren, as the immediacy of the Final Solution fades, as popular culture wears nothing-is-sacred irony as a badge, the focus changes. It has gone from the humor created by the people who experienced the horrors of the Holocaust to humor interpreted by those who grew up years, or decades, afterward. And sometimes the interpreters, like Amis, are not even Jewish. In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Amis dismisses the view that the subject is off-limits for novelists. `"It makes absolutely no philosophical sense' not to write about the Holocaust" he is quoted as saying. 'And it's slightly sanc- timonious, I think. Slightly as if, 'I care more than you do about it You can care a very great deal and still write a novel" It's the author's intent that governs whether a satiric work about the Holocaust crosses some imaginary line of literary taste, said Menachem Rosensaft, son of survivors and senior vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants. "Society has changed" in the nearly 70 years since World War II and the Holocaust ended, he said. "There is a much lighter feel to contemporary culture than there was 20 years ago or 50 years ago" "It depends on the work" and on the intent of the creator, Rosensaft added. If humor is employed for "constructive" reasons, "if you have respect for the topic ... there is nothing wrong with it. If the purpose is to make light of the [Holocaust] experience, that's different" Rosensaft said he "didn't see any prob- lem with the timing" of Amis' novel com- ing out in the wake of this summer's Israeli war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza, which fanned anti-Semitism in many European countries, but Daniel Levine, owner of J. Levine Books & Judaica in Midtown Manhattan, criticized the timing. "The world is ready to exterminate the Jews again" Levine said. Anti-Semites, he said, may find ammunition in a book that apparently downplays the severity of the Final Solution. D(So NE IGHBORH0011 CONCERT SERIES MADE POSSIBLE BY THE WILLIAM DAVIDSON FOUNDATION THE DSO COMES TO YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD! DSO In West Bloomfield JANUARY 8, 2015 AT 7:30 P.M. Berman Center for the Performing Arts • 6600 W. 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