ABC star’s ‘obscene’ Anne Frank joke sparks outrage

A radio host has been accused of brutally desecrating the memory of the Holocaust during a stand-up routine at a comedy festival.

A Triple J radio host has been blasted for using a derogatory sexual term to describing Holocaust survivor Anne Frank during a stand-up routine at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Concetta Caristo, a co-host of Triple J’s breakfast program, was telling the audience she was a “girls’ girl” who could get along with “any girl in the world, even in history”.

“Put me in a room with Cleopatra and I’d be like, ‘Oh my god, I love your eyeliner’, or with Anne Frank and I’d say, “Slut, I have a diary too! Congrats on the book deal’,” she said.

Concetta Caristo described Holocaust victim Anne Frank as a “slut”.

But Anti-Defamation Commission chair Dvir Abramovich said it was not funny, describing it instead as a “brutal desecration” of the memory of the Holocaust.

“This wasn’t just a joke. It was a brutal desecration of the memory of Anne Frank and the one-and-a-half million Jewish children who were murdered in the Holocaust – gassed, shot, starved, erased,” he said in a statement.

“When someone takes a victim of genocide and turns her into an obscene punchline, they don’t just mock her – they violate her.”

Concetta Caristo has gone travelling after the festival. Picture: Instagram

The 15-year-old girl died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945 after she was found hiding in Amsterdam.

She gained posthumous fame after the publication of her diary, which shared her personal account of the Holocaust.

“Anne Frank … didn’t get a book deal. She got typhus. She got starvation. She got a death sentence in Bergen-Belsen,” Dr Abramovich said.

Concetta Caristo, a co-host of Triple J's breakfast program, has been criticised for making a joke about Holocaust victim Anne Frank.

He also expressed shock at the use of the word “slut”, describing it as a “term of sexual humiliation aimed at a girl who never lived long enough to become a woman”.

Ms Caristo’s management told NewsWire she was “away and not available”.

Her social media indicates she is currently travelling, including kayaking in Hamilton Island.