The 1997 Academy Award-winning movie by the Italian filmmaker Roberto Benigni, La Vita è Bella (Life Is Beautiful), raised the fundamental question of whether it is permissible to use satire and humor in confronting the Holocaust. Many critics and general audiences, particularly those not immediately affected by the events of the Holocaust, expressed great delight with Benigni's film. Others registered their deep disgust.

The literary form of satire has a long tradition and is closely associated with writers such as Jonathan Swift, Voltaire, Heinrich Heine, Kurt Tucholsky, and Erich Kästner. Similarly, artists such as William Hogarth, Honoré Daumier, George Grosz, and John Heart-field used their drawings to ridicule social events.

With the advent of fascism in Germany in 1933, many writers and visual artists emulated their predecessors and even stepped up their attempts to use satire as a weapon in the fight...