Independent Lens

Do you know any Holocaust jokes? No. I can't go there. You don't want to walk out on stage and go, "How's your Friday night going, everybody? Let's talk about Auschwitz." No one's getting laid after that show.

Announcer

If you want to know whether the Holocaust is off limits when it comes to comedy, trying asking an Auschwitz survivor, like Renee Firestone.

Renee

One day, the doctor arrives, and who is it? It's Dr. Mengele. "If you survive this war," he says, "you better have your tonsils removed." "Oh, my God, that's awful and hilarious. It's awful hilarious."

Announcer

Filmmaker Ferne Pearlstein explores when humor hurts...

Man

Humor in the Holocaust? I don't think this is funny.

Announcer

and when it heals.

Speaking German gibberish

Announcer

Without humor, I don't think we would've survived. "The Last Laugh," now only on "Independent Lens."

Man

Che bella cosa Na jurnata 'e sole N'aria serena doppo na tempesta Pe' ll'aria fresca Pare gia na festa Che bella cosa Na jurnata 'e sole Ma n'atu sole...

Renee

Hmm, you have some coffee? Uh, yeah. I thought we'd just have a quick bite before we leave, but this place is so filthy, I don't want to lay anything down. I brought a little bit of goodies for us. Like a little bit of this. My hands are not that clean. That's OK. I don't care. If you want the napkin... Thank you. So use this napkin. I don't need it. OK. Auschwitz wasn't cleaner than this. I knew you would say that.

Both laugh

Gilbert Gottfried

Two Jews have been sent to assassinate Hitler. This is during the war. They've gotten some intelligence as to where Hitler might be. They're standing outside his home. They're hiding. They're waiting for Hitler. 8:00 comes, go, no Hitler. An hour goes by. He's not home yet. Where's Hitler? Then another two hours go by. He's not home yet.

Now it's 8

30, and he still doesn't show up, and one Jew turns to the other and says... "Gee, I hope nothing happened to him."

Mel Brooks

So what is this supposed to be, crossing lines, being in bad taste? So shall I start the interview with, "Heil Hitler!"? Is that good? OK. I mean, it's part and par-- it's keeping, right? Stalin is nicer, right-- it's easier-- but this is the guy that made me money, so I stay with him. The thing about a joke about the Holocaust, AIDS, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, it's all about the funny. It's got to be funny. You can't tell a crappy joke about the biggest tragedy in the world. You can't do it. Comedy puts light onto darkness, you know, and--and darkness can't live where there's light, so that's why it's important to talk about things that are taboo, because otherwise, they just stay in this dark place, and they become dangerous. I don't have a philosophy about it. I just know that it's much more fun to laugh than not to laugh. You have to have a sense of humor. If you don't have a sense of humor, just go to your grave or get cremated or something.

Rob Reiner

The Holocaust itself is not funny. There's nothing funny about it, but survival and what it takes to survive, there can be humor in that.

Renee

One day, the doctor arrives, and who is it? It's Dr. Mengele, and we have to get undressed, he's going to check us, and we were wondering, "Why--why are they checking us? Well, what is the doctor checking?" I mean, that was itself funny, but I come in front of him, and he puts his hand on my shoulder, and he says to me in German, "Genug speck noch," "There--there is still enough fat," and then he says to me, "If you survive this war," he says, "you better have your tonsils removed. You have big tonsils," so, you know, at that time I was thinking, "Is he insane? I mean, tomorrow I may die. I'm worried about my tonsils?" But when I came back, when I survived and came back and I thought about it, what he said, it was funny. I was thinking that I'll make matzo brei. How many eggs do you need? Why don't you get 4? Most people don't expect survivors to have much humor after the Holocaust, and that's really not the case at all. The survivors actually have some of the worst gallows humor ever, and I guess that they're the only ones allowed to do that. I remember the story that you told me. They would make parties in their head. There was no food, so they would invent the food in their head... Oh, we cooked a lot. and cooked a lot, so, I mean, the absurdity of some of this stuff is humorous, so they're making parties, and they're talking about what they're going to serve and the recipes for it, and, "My recipe is better than your recipe." I mean, this is an absurdity, but it's certainly humorous, and were you laughing when you were doing it at times? No. We were not laughing, but the last sentence always was, "Now, you know this will never happen." Ha ha!

Man

335, ghetto diary, October 29, 1941. "Every day at the Art Cafe on Leszno Street, "one can hear songs and satires on the police "and even the Gestapo. The typhus epidemic itself is the subject of jokes."

Renee

The typhus is a subject of jokes.

Man

"It is laughter through tears, but it is laughter. This is our only weapon in the ghetto."

Renee

The only weapon in the ghetto, laugh at the death...

Man

"Humor is the only thing the Nazis cannot understand."

Renee

and that's the only thing the Nazis cannot understand, humor. Humor is the only thing they don't understand. They don't understand life, either.

Etgar Keret

Humor is a way of dealing with an unbearable reality. It's a way of protesting. Uh, it's a way sometimes of keeping your dignity when you have to do things that you don't want to do, so if you do them but you keep your humor, it's like saying, you know, "I'm still human."

Clary

Bei mir bist du schon Cela signifie Vous etes pour moi plus que la vie That's all you're going to hear.

Brooks

I met Robert Clary. I spoke a little French, so he--he was very happy because he--he wasn't that proficient in English in 1952. He was getting better, and now he's-- he speaks it as if he really knows it. Robert Clary was in the camps, and he would-- he would entertain in the camps, and the entertainment saved his life. That was second nature with me-- singing, dancing, clowning around-- and that helped me tremendously when I was deported because automatically when I went, even the first camp, I--I started to sing for--for the--the people who were there, the--the--the prisoners. People are constant, consistent, and if you were funny and-- if you're funny before, you'll be funny during, and you'll be funny after. I was 16 years old when I was arrested and sent to camp, and I was too young to really realize what the situation was. I was deported with a big amount of my family-- my mother, my father, an uncle, and a sister with her husband and two kids. They all went to the gas chambers. Out of 13 of my immediate family, I'm the only one who came back. For the 10 minutes that I worked or 15 minutes that I sang, they forgot where they were, and that was the most important thing, and that's what make me being alive.

Singing in foreign language

Clary

Now the first camp when we entertained, the SS, they didn't come. We only entertained for the inmate...

Singing continues

Clary

but the second camp, why the SS came to see us, all--all I can deduct then is, like, they had such a terrible life hitting us and killing us that they wanted to be entertained, too.

Max Ehrlich

Jeder schimpft heut auf Berlin Alle aber loben Wien...

Aaron Breitbart

The camps, in certain cases, had a cabaret, but they would never put on anything that--that mentioned gas chambers or the mass-murder squads. It was subversive by nature, but you had to be very careful how you did it so the SS guards who came would not understand that they were the ones who were being spoken about.

Ehrlich

Auch so zart sein...

Breitbart

It's the kind of humor that'll make you cry. Really the underpinning is sadness.

Ehrlich

Fang noch mal von vorne an deine alten...

Zdenka Fantlova

I was in the cabaret, and it was very funny, very witty. Of course people were laughing. People were laughing and talking about it the next morning, and "How did you like so and so?" Of course. Well, we imagined that we live in a normal time.

Woman singing "Terezin March" in German

Fantlova

There was a song which we have adopted as our anthem. It went something like, "Let's join hands. "We shall overcome. "When the tyranny ends, we shall all dance on the ruins of Terezin." Well, sadly, very few would have been able to do so.

Renee

What did you do all morning?

Clary

What did I do all morning? I don't know. I just talked my head off. You did? Did you-- did you talk about how funny the camp was? Oh, God, yes. I said it was hilarious. From the moment we put our feet in the camp, we were laughing. We never stopped laughing.

We woke up in the morning at 3

00, even when we-- even when they make us walk-- When we slept, we were-- Even when they made us walk in the middle of the night, we laughed and said, "Ha ha ha! You'll get your day. Ha ha ha!"

"Hogan's Heroes March" playing

Renee

Let's talk about the television show you used to do.

Clary

What television show? That's very strange. About the concentration camp. What concentration camp?

Gottfried

Who walked into a producer's office and said, "Here's the idea--a group of soldiers in a Nazi prison camp. It's a comedy!"

Clary

You think that "Hogan's Hero" was about a concentration camp?

Renee

It was about a camp. There were no Jews in the-- I didn't play a Jewish kid. No. There were no Jews in it, but there were Nazis in it. Potato soup? Thank you. "Hogan's Hero" was about prisoner of war in a stalag. It was not about genocide. It was not Jews going to the conc-- to the-- to the gas chambers. No, of course not. We knew that. No, but a lot of people-- That's why it was so funny. Yeah. I know, but they ask me-- they always ask me, "How could you have done "Hogan's Heroes" after what you went though?" Je the plumerai le cou Je the plumerai le cou Et la tete Et la tete How did it end?

Clary

We all died. Ha ha! Now, when you're gonna die, are you going to be in-- in a Jewish cemetery? You going to be buried? Next to my husband. I have a place next to my husband. Not--I'm not going next to my wife. So where are you going? In the ocean, even though I'm a Pisces and I don't know how to swim. No. You're not going to be cremated. Yes, I am. No, you're not. Don't tell me what to do in my life. Now, you see-- you see, that-- that I could not-- What? I cannot imagine a Jew to be cremated. Are you going to stop talking to me, or you want to try my soup? Here. Try my soup. Maybe you'll change your mind. I--I-- Yes, absolutely. You know what I said to Rabbi Hier? Once we were talking about that. I said-- he said-- I said, "I'm going to be cremated." He said, "You cannot do that." I said, "What about my parents?" and that cut him down. I'm going to be cremated, and then the fish going to eat me. They're going to say, "Mm, what wonderful French food. Mm mm. Yum yum." Little do they know I have Polish blood in me.

Women

We're gonna hitchhike Up to the Catskills We know the highway Route 17 We're going to hitchhike Up to the mountains Up to the finest resorts we have seen

Brooks

When I was a kid in the mountains, I would do...

Speaking German gibberish

Brooks

and I would get a lot of laughs with Hitler, and a few Jews after the show would say, "You know, that's not in such good taste, you know?" and I'd say, "I don't care. I really don't give a

beep

Brooks

what's in good taste." No comedian ever in the Catskills would come and tell jokes about the Holocaust. They would string this guy up. You know what I was careful about, honestly? I would do this a lot, but I wouldn't wear the swastika, not for a while, not till I did "The Producers." Humor healed us, especially in the Catskills. You know, we would go, and--and my mother would laugh like I had never saw her laugh. There was a release because we were--you know, it was like a kind of community where they felt safe and they weren't "the other." I started writing jokes for stand-up comedians who played in the Catskill Mountains. I was 21. They were like 50, 55. I was a generation removed from that. Jokes about your wives in those days. "Terrible. You hear about the man in room 302? "He came back, he found his best friend in bed with his wife. "He said, "Morris, I have to, but you?" I would write some jokes for them about, you know-- you know, that my uncle was an all-round camper at Auschwitz, OK, and they would laugh in the car, or the band would laugh, but there's not a chance in hell that you can tell that to an audience. I was very brave then. Maybe I'm not so brave now, but I was very, very brave because it was in questionable taste in--in--in 1948 when I worked in the--right, two years or 3 years after the end of the war to be doing, uh, Hitler bits. Time makes a difference. Obviously, nobody cares if you do Inquisition jokes. The Inquisition Let's begin The Inquisition Look out, sin We have a mission to convert the Jews Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew Had I done "The Inquisition" as a movie in 1492, I would've been in a lot of trouble, but enough time had gone by. Confess Confess, confess Don't be boring... 5 centuries had gone by, and so it was OK. It's better to lose your skullcap than your skull Oy gevalt Somebody once said, "Tragedy plus time equals comedy," and I always felt like, "Why wait?" Steve Allen, Lenny Bruce-- I've seen all kinds of people um, given credit for that-- for that comment. I don't know that that's necessarily true, and I don't know what that time limit is. I don't know. It's-- Time opens up different avenues of--of thought and acceptance.

Wayne Newton

Danke schoen Darling, danke schoen Thank you for all the joy and pain Picture show, second balcony Was the place we'd meet Second seat Go Dutch treat You was fine Danke schoen Darling, danke schoen Thank you for Seeing me again Though we go on our separate ways...

Eugene Lebowitz

Shabbat Shalom, everybody. Welcome, Renee, haven't seen you for a while. I'm glad you're finally here. Thank you, and now I have the honor and the pleasure of introducing you to Deb Filler.

Filler

Shalom aleikhem. My name is Deb Filler, and my father was a survivor of the Holocaust and the Shoah, and Dad always felt isolated being in New Zealand, so one of the things that he used to do was turn on TV, and he'd say, "That's Barbara Eden-- she's Jewish-- and that's Captain Spock, the guy with the pointy ears-- he's Jewish-- and that's Cat Stevens-- he's Jewish." I'd say "Dad, Cat Stevens? What are you talking about? He's not Jewish." He goes, "Yeah. Sure, he's Jewish. "His name was probably Steven Katz, and he switched it."

Laughter

Filler

Anyway, see, my father, he would always like to change everything into Yiddish, right, so what about... Nomaidel, no kvetch Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not going to do it, then. Gerhardt, you said you saw it in the camps-- my father saw it, too-- that there was a possibility in the camp to make a joke or a sketch or a laugh. Is it possible that it's-- There were people that were naturally humorous, the--the way they behaved. Like, when the SS guard came, the Kapo carried on. You should've heard him, like, "The next minute, he was going to murder us all," and when the SS guard left, "Go ahead," he said. "Do what you want." We were laughing. We were all miserable, but without humor, I don't think we would have survived.

Woman

Sorry. I didn't find any humor at all, just sadness and tragedy.

Man

I don't know what's funny about anything in the Holocaust. I was a child survivor, so I didn't suffer like some of the older people here. It's hard for me to understand how they could see the-- Humor in the Holocaust, or do you mean afterwards? There were funny incidents after. I can tell you a whole bunch of those, but, uh, during the time that you were, uh, deprived of a normal, human life? Boy... I can't even imagine that. Volare Whoa, oh, a-doo ba doo ba doo ba doo-wop Cantare Whoa, oh Volare Whoa, oh Cantare Whoa, oh, oh, oh, de boop

Renee

Did you enjoy that? Uh, I like to hear the song, but I could not enjoy it. Why not with an Italian singing a beautiful song? Alto del sole ed ancora piu su... Because I remember for so many youngsters who were perished and they can't enjoy this beautiful place. But, you know, you survived. You're alive. How can you not have pleasure out of the fact that you survived? Always I remember the children screaming, the selection. You know, that is, like, in our shadow. You cannot forget, and you cannot enjoy-- No, no, no. You cannot live in the shadow of the-- of those cries. You have to remember it, but you cannot live in those shadows. I don't live in the shadow, but the shadow is following me all of my life. You know I speak about the Holocaust all the time, but I enjoy life. I'm so happy that I have 3 great-grandchildren. Could--could Hitler imagine that I will survive and have 3 great-grandchildren? I mean, that's my revenge.

Max Bialystock

We've struck gold. Kiss it. Kiss it. You found a flop. "A flop." That's putting it mildly. We found a disaster, catastrophe, an outrage, a "guaranteed to close in one night" beauty. Let's see it.

Ross

There's no subtleties when it comes to the Holocaust. The deeper you go with the humor, the more revengeful it is. He's wearing a German helmet. Shh. Don't say anything to offend him. Mel Brooks talked about it, revenge through ridicule... I'm not responsible. I only followed orders. so by making these jokes, it's the Jewish way of...

Exhales

Ross

getting through it. You know, Mel Brooks always said about "The Producers," that he was ridiculing-- by ridiculing the Nazis, he was taking away their power.

Brooks

"The Producers" was scandalous. It was called "Springtime for Hitler," and Joe Levine said, "I can't put that on the marquee. I can't sell it."

Piano playing introduction

Brooks

What-- Thank you! "Springtime for Hitler" so early after the war?

Singing in German

Brooks

Nazis dancing? Mit a bang Mit a boom... I got a lot of mail, from Jews mostly. "How could you do-- How could we see Hitler? How could you show the swastika, How could you--" Springtime for Hitler and Germany "Springtime for Hitler," my God. The audience was like... That's pretty much what I think a lot of people thought at the time. It was a lot of people going...

Chorus

We're marching to a faster pace Look out, here comes the master race

Rob

But then after a while, you get the joke. You understand what's funny about it.

Harry Shearer

When "The Producers" was a movie, it was daring. Goosestep's the new step today

Shearer

The whole essence of the joke of "The Producers" was, how could you possibly think that a musical about Hitler was acceptable? That was the whole McGuffin of the picture. By the time it gets to Broadway, a movie about a spectacular Broadway failure because it was such bad taste becomes a Broadway hit because it's not in bad taste anymore.

Woman

Well, talk about bad taste.

Chorus

Springtime for Hitler... The passage of time alone has made it so kind of almost sweet. People sing along with "Springtime for Hitler." There's no revulsion. If it had been "Springtime for Saddam Hussein" when it appeared on Broadway, it would have had the original kick. War

Silence

Renee

Good afternoon. My name is Renee, and I am a Holocaust survivor. I was supposed to go through those chimneys like my family, my friends. Every morning I wake up, I ask, "Why me? Why did I escape those chimneys?" I have no idea. There were no seats in the cattle cars... and it was packed with people. Do you know that while we are sitting here, a genocide is going on? That's why I'm here. This almost looks comfortable. In 1933, when I was 9 years old, I went to my father, and I asked, "Is it possible that this man is claiming that he is gonna kill all of us?" And my father said, "Don't listen to that comedian. "Don't you see? He looks like Charlie Chaplin? He's going to be out of office in no time." Well, my father was wrong. They packed us into cattle cars. Thousands and thousands of people pouring out of this train. My parents disappeared in the crowd. My sister was crying. It's hard to imagine how it really looked. The Nazi officer, holding on to vicious dogs, taps me on the shoulder and he says, "You go," so I am moving with my sister, holding on. He stops my sister. He keeps looking at me, looking at her. Well, I happen to have long, blond hair and blue eyes. My little sister looks completely different-- dark, brown hair; piercing, black eyes-- and I grabbed my sister, and I yelled, "Run."

Klara

Here is the picture of my Aunt Klara, who I'm named after, and here is the paper that my mother found at Auschwitz in the archive that shows that she was experimented on. When I found those papers, I also found the doctor who actually experimented on her, and the following day, we flew to Munich, and I met the doctor and confronted him with that paper, and he said, "Oh, we did only harmless experiments," and I said, "Well, Doctor, "if they were harmless experiments, why did she die?" And he had the audacity to turn to me and to say, "Well, we couldn't send her back to the camp "to tell everybody what we're doing, so we had to get rid of her." That's--that's how I found-- 53 years after liberation, I found out that my sister was shot after they experimented on her.

Film projector whirring

Man

Is that who I think it is?

Different man

Uh, yes. That's Adolf Hitler in a home movie. Looks a little like Mel Brooks.

Brooks

Anything I could do to deflate Germans, anything, I did.

Whistling "Springtime for Hitler"

Brooks

"Peeping Times," home movies of Hitler... Danke. I was there with Eva Braun. What did you do? It was a bug. A bug? You killed a bug? "You killed the bug?" A living thing, you just take its life away? She said, "It's just a bug. It doesn't make any--" I said, "Well, why don't you ask the bug's family how they feel?" You just don't kill things. What's the matter with you?

Gottfried

You can do jokes about Nazis, but if you say, "Holocaust," then it becomes, uh, bad taste. That's the thing. There's tons of Nazi jokes. It's like there's nothing taboo about making a Nazi joke. Schultz! You dummkopf.

Speaks German gibberish

Charles

Bugs Bunny was making fun of Nazis. The Three Stooges were making fun of Nazis. The Marx Brothers were making fun of Nazis, and this is during World War II. Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!

All

Heil Hitler. Heil myself.

David Steinberg

Anyone who is in a position of extreme authority is great to make fun of because they're pompous. There's--there is an arrogance to being in that position.

Keret

Humor is the weapon of the weak. Think about the things that we make jokes about. We make jokes about our bosses. We make jokes about death. You know, when I was in the armies, we make--made jokes about our commanders. Our commanders didn't need to make jokes about us. They could just order us to do whatever they wanted us to do.

Lisa Lampanelli

Nazi jokes--easy. Making fun of bad people--easy. Making fun of good people or tragedy, that's what's hard, so making a "Holocaust joke" about the act of the Holocaust in general and the event is really difficult. "Do you have a Holocaust joke?" "Do you have a Holocaust joke?" Gee, I don't know any Holocau-- Do you know any Holocaust jokes? No. I can't go there. I can't. I personally, who have done a musical called "The Inquisition," you know, with Jews floating around and being dunked in water and tortured, I cannot go there.

Ross

Well, to me, you don't have a Holocaust joke. You have a joke about dating. You have a joke about politics. You have-- The joke's always about something else for me. It's the joke's always about something else. Then the punch line is the shocker. That's when you mention Hitler or the Holocaust, or, you know, Auschwitz is a funny punch line, not a funny topic, but a funny punch line. You don't want to walk out on stage and go, "How's your Friday night going, everybody? Let's talk about Auschwitz." That's not gonna fly. No one's getting laid after that show. A great joke really does trump all rules, but it's got to be a great joke, and the higher the stakes, the higher the standard for how good the joke has to be. It has to be funny. If you're going to cross the line, you better be funny. Of course it has to be funny. Otherwise, it's not a joke.

Shearer

A joke about a mother-in-law can be that good and pass muster, but a joke about this stuff has to be, like, you know, you're--you're-- you're ashamed that you laughed at it, but you're laughing because it's, like, you can't help yourself. So I'll never forget, I actually did have this thought, and comedians do have these thoughts that go really overboard, and I thought, "Could I ever tell anyone this?" and I'm thinking, "If I have this thought, someone else has the thought," but I was at one point watching footage of one of the concentration camps being liberated on one of the history, you know, World War-- World War II channels, and so I'm watching this video of a concentration camp being liberated, and I actually thought to myself, "Now, if I was standing on line naked for the gas chambers, would I hold my stomach in?"

Ross

I have a joke in my act now about making love to my girlfriend, and she's so beautiful, I always have an orgasm too fast, and--and I said, "Well, what if we had a code word, something you whisper in my ear to make me forget about having an orgasm, just to last a little longer?" She said, "What do you want your code word to be?" and I just thought of the worst thing I could think of. I said, "I don't know. Just say--just say, "Holocaust," and the next day, we're making love in the morning, and it's just beautiful, and so lovely, I'm about to have an orgasm after two minutes, and suddenly she whispers in my ear, says, "I can't believe those poor 6 million Jews who died in the ovens at Auschwitz." I was like, "What the hell are you talking about? I didn't want a Wikipedia printout right now."

Klara

Oh, this should be good-- Sarah Silverman on the Holocaust. I always know when it's Hitler's birthday. They announce it on "Entertainment Tonight." Right before they go to commercial you see, like, a silhouette, and then they say, "This man is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews. Is it Ted Danson?" "Patrick Duffy?" Heh. My lesbian niece, their whole family is very Jewy, and she called me up, and she was like, um, you know, "Aunt Sarah, did you know that Hitler killed 60 million Jews?" And I corrected her, and I said, "You know, I think, um-- I think he's responsible for killing 6 million Jews," and she said, "Oh, yeah, 6 million. I knew that, but seriously, I mean, what's the difference?" "The difference is, 60 million is unforgivable, young lady." Is 6 million forgivable? Well, but that's the joke. I believe that if black people were in Germany during World War II that the Holocaust would have never happened-- I do, you know-- or not to Jews. Maybe true.

Brooks

Somebody might bring up, how far are comics allowed to go? Are they allowed to go as far as Sarah Silverman?

Silverman

Finally, a Lifetime Achievement Award for Mel Brooks. Wow, what an elegant way to say, "Hey, let's wrap it up." She made a joke about the Holocaust. What do the Jews hate most about the Holocaust?

Audience

What? The cost. Ohh, I couldn't, you know. Uh, I couldn't believe it. I did laugh-- I have to admit, I laughed-- but maybe the time has come for that joke, and it works. I don't think that 25 years ago-- that--that probably would've gotten the biggest "Whoa!" of--of all time.

Joan Rivers

Heidi Klum. Look at that. The last time a German looked this hot was when they were pushing Jews into the ovens. Wow. Wow. It's funny. I wouldn't have said it. I couldn't have said it. It doesn't mean that it isn't funny. Uh, even the rhythm is good, but, you know, I don't want to-- You know, it's--it's in terrible taste-- I mean, it's dreadful-- but it's funny, and--and I admire her guts, I couldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. I mean, she was kind of making fun of the Germans, I guess. How about, like, it's just a funny joke, and you're allowed to laugh, and you're allowed to turn the channel, so if you don't want this kind of humor, move along. I'll take 20th Century History, Adolf.

Hitler

The cause of the sinking of the Titanic. Uh, what is an iceberg? No. I'm sorry. The correct response is, "What were the Jews?"

Mary Lou

Hello. Mr. Alexander?

Alexander

Thi--this is really inappropriate. This is offensive. I'm sorry. I can't--I can't follow this. I'm sorry. I can't go on after this. Didn't you do Nazi stuff on "Seinfeld"? Yeah. That was an entirely different situation.

Roz Weinman

I think Jerry Seinfeld has been known to say that Standards and Practices helped him make a funnier show because you can't go the easy route. You were making out during "Schindler's List"? It's harder to conceptually, uh, contain yourself within the boundaries and still truly be funny, and "Seinfeld," to me, is the classic example. Medium turkey chili. The one regret I do have of all of the years at Standards in terms of, uh, Holocaust humor is the Soup Nazi. I didn't get any bread. Just forget it. Let it go.

Weinman

I think the notion of "Nazi" being used as a, uh--a-- a very mild pejorative does trivialize that experience, and I had no clue at the time that that would enter the lexicon the way that it has. I don't see the society collapsing as a result of the Soup Nazi. No soup for you!

Charles

That's Larry's skill, to be able to find the way into a subject that makes it palatable to people, so is that even a taboo at that point? You know, that's the question. Oh, the Rabbi said he's bringing a survivor tomorrow. Should I have my father bring his friend Solly? Yeah. Do survivors like seeing each other?

Essman

When I first saw the outline for the "Survivor" episode, I--I kind of-- you know, there's--there's-- there's a gut reaction that I have to certain things. The Holocaust is one of them. There's a sensitivity. I'm Jewish, you know. They--they could come back and wipe me and my family out, and, you know, so there's always a little "ungh" that you feel, this little thing up your spine. Where's the other survivor?

Colby Donaldson

So here we are in a region of Australia, the world's 10 most deadly snakes, 9 of them inhabit this region. It was harrowing.

Solly

That's a very interesting story. I was in a concentration camp. You never even suffered one minute in your life compared to what I went through. All survivors talk like that? Mom, wait. I can't hear it. Look. I'm saying we spent 42 days trying to survive. We had very little rations, no snacks. Snacks? Wait. What are you talking, snacks? We didn't eat sometimes for a week.

Donaldson

Did you guys have a bathroom? A bathroom? We didn't have one. We had 12 people at a time. Don't aggravate yourself here.

Solly

You don't know nothing about survival. I'm a survivor. I'm a survivor. I'm a survivor! I'm a survivor! I'm a sur-- I don't think this is funny.

Abraham Foxman

We expect more from Jews, a greater sensitivity, and maybe it's not fair. What? I understand why we're laughing. Why are they laughing? What are they laughing at? Now come on. Your money or your life.

Foxman

Jack Benny. Jack Benny probably institutionalized the stereotype of the cheap Jew in ways that anti-Semites couldn't have achieved because more people watched his show than they watched anything else. What, was that his intention? Absolutely not, but every time he said it and because he was Jewish, he gave it credibility. I said, your money or your life. I'm thinking it over. How you do it makes a difference. If you do it with care, with love, with respect, it's--it's-- it's more acceptable. It's not comfortable, but it's--it's more acceptable.

Borat

This is song called "In My Country, There is a Problem."

Country music playing

Hooting and cheering

Borat

In my country, there is problem And that problem is transport

Charles

If you're laughing at something, it's tapping something in your subconscious, some embarrassment you have, some inhibition you have, and then the taboo joke allows you to kind of purge and have a catharsis.

Borat

In my country, there is problem And that problem is the Jew They take everybody's money They never give it back

Charles

People need that. Subconsciously, they need-- they have that need to sort of tap that dark part, that id-like part of their--of their psyche. Throw the Jew down the well

Hooting

Charles

So my country can be free

Man

So my country can be free You must grab him by his horns Then we have a big party

Foxman

Sacha Baron Cohen says, "I am exposing. I am airing prejudice." The only problem is that the people are laughing are not laughing at the prejudice. They're applauding the prejudice. When--when the joke is, "Throw the Jews down the well. Kill the Jews," it--it--it's not funny, but even if it was funny, they're applauding it. Throw the Jew down the well So my country can be free So my country can be free You must grab him by his horns You must grab him by his horns Then we have a big party My, uh, dialogue or disagreement with Sacha Baron Cohen, it really goes back to Archie Bunker. Oh, no. Oh, no. I'm going to sue that guy. First thing in the morning, I'm going to get myself a good, Jew lawyer. Archie, do you always have to label people? Why can't you just get a lawyer? Why does it have to be a Jewish lawyer? 'Cause when I'm going to sue an Arab, I'm going to get a guy that's full of hate. Our feeling was, "You have made Archie Bunker a hero. They're not laughing at him. They're laughing with him." There were people who agreed with Archie. There were people who agreed with Mike, and I think that's what made the show interesting and what made it good. Um, you know, we always made fun of Archie, we as liberals, and so we thought that they were laughing at that, but I think even the people who agreed with Archie realized he was a bit of a-- of a buffoon, a bit of an idiot. You can't control how your joke will be inferred, you know? Uh, I had a friend Tom Gianas who would call it "mouthful of blood laughs," you know, where they're laughing at the wrong thing, and, uh, that's hard, but it's just no longer yours. My nana was a survivor of the Holocaust-- or, I'm sorry, alleged Holocaust-- and she, uh-- she had the tattoo, you know, the--the number, and thank God she was at one of the better concentration camps. She had a vanity number. It said, um, "Bedazzled," which is kind of fun. You know, I talked about the Holocaust, and I said, "the alleged Holocaust," and that's a joke about Holocaust deniers, and, uh, you know, a sophisticated audience would understand that, and-- and maybe a less sophisticated audience may not. I'm not saying that I'm sophisticated, but, um, what are the dangers of that? That maybe a group of people will think that the Holocaust didn't happen? I--I--I think that's worth the risk. I think it's worth the risk. Oh, my goodness, Joan. I am so sorry I'm late, and I apologize. Why were you late? Yeah. This is-- I've waited for you too long. I beg your pardon. They sent this big stretch Mercedes limo for us, and it got stuck. It wouldn't move for 2 1/2 hours, and I'm thinking, you know, the Germans killed 6 million Jews. You can't fix a

beep

Foxman

carburetor? All right, Joan. Joan, Joan, now--

Sighs

Foxman

You know, it's tough, um, when she's not here to defend herself, although she defended herself strong enough for a long time.

AJ Hammer

There are some people, including the Anti-Defamation League, who said your joke was offensive. How do you respond to that? It's a joke, number one. Number two, it was about the Holocaust. That's the way I remind people about the Holocaust. I do it with humor. Her defense was nonsense. Forgive me, Joan, but it was nonsense. To say this is how you brought attention to the Holocaust, my God, this is how you made it nothing. I know that it's a real fear in people that the Holocaust would be forgotten. Has it not been forgotten? There are genocides all over the world happening, and we're not doing anything. They're just not happening to Jews. Might be something to think about when you're, uh, getting mad at Joan Rivers for making a joke about the Holocaust which at least is keeping it, for lack of a better word, alive. Join me at the sports lodge, where I'm going to be unveiling my very own Holocaust erection. I've got a real person who was at Auschwitz, plus we have a dunk tank, plus we've got a lion. Roar! Don't be fooled by imitation Holocaust memorials. Come to mine--Sarah Silverman's Holocaust Memorial. Auschwitz? You'll be saying, "Wowschwitz." Hi.

Woman

Good morning. How are you? I'm OK. Good. I need a red rose. Yes. Can I get-- Yes. Sure. One single red rose. Yes. Oh, my God. Here you go. Thank you. How much is it? Oh, no, no, no. No charge.

Renee

Both of us were survivors, but both of us realized we are alive and we have to go on living. You can't die while you are alive, heh, and think of the dark side of life all the time. You just can't. You can't survive that way. I bring a rose because that's what he used to bring me every day--one rose. I will never forget that. OK. Uh...

Sniffles

Renee

Whenever I remember, I cry, and whenever I don't remember, I laugh or smile... and I'm glad that I'm able to smile and laugh. It would've been a horrible life for me for 70 years to just cry and to raise my daughter. She was a baby. I had to laugh with her. I had to smile with her. This was Klara--I don't know-- maybe 12 years old, 10 years old--I don't know-- and I think she was very cute. She was a little dancer. This was in 1948, when I came to the United States. I had to make her understand that life is good. I didn't want her to mourn with me the rest of her life, so you learn to do what you have to do to live, to survive.

Announcer

To protect his family, this loving father has to think fast on his feet, to turn the hard truth into a simple game.

Giosue laughs

Announcer

"Life is Beautiful." "Life is Beautiful" is the worst movie ever made.

Gottfried

Seriously, the blurb should be, "He puts the "ha" in "Holocaust." To make a comedy about a concentration camp and avoid what really went on there, well, it's a great trick, but it's--it-- I mean it's absolutely ludicrous. Achtung!

Speaks German

Guard speaking German

Gottfried

He laughs and jokes and kids around, and that's how everything turns out OK.

Speaking German

Foxman

"Life is Beautiful" it's absolutely brilliant. It--it--it portrays it to a new audience that you can take humor, but you can then get their attention, bring them in, and yet to deliver the message of the horror. Now look. I-- I survived the Holocaust because my parents did the unthinkable. In order to save me, they gave me away, so, heh, did I not understand "Life is Beautiful" when this father does all these crazy things to protect his child from the horrors around him? It's not a comedy. It's not a farce. It's--it's--it's--it's--it's-- it's such a sense of reality, and yet I understood when there were survivors who said, "No. It's unacceptable."

David Cross

I would think Jerry Lewis would see "Life is Beautiful" as a

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David Cross

version of, uh--of "The Day the Clown Cried." There's a movie Jerry Lewis made called "The Day the Clown Cried" where he's a clown who's put into a concentration camp and his job is to entertain the children as they're being pushed into the gas chambers.

Cross

No one's seen it. I mean, human beings have seen it, not many. I know Harry Shearer infamously is one of the very few people who's seen it. I--I am one of the handful of people. I don't even know if it's a handful. It may be two fingers. A rough cut had become available. It was a startling experience. It's material that you'd have to be so sublimely careful with, whether you're being funny or not. The idea itself is--there's-- is not laughably bad. Jerry Lewis wrote the script. Just tonally, it's all over the place. At times, it's "Life is Beautiful," and at times, it's "Dumb and Dumber."

Shearer

It sort of luxuriated in this mawkish sentimentality which just made it ludicrous. I think I said that it was like seeing a Tijuana velvet clown painting of the Holocaust.

Brass band playing

Cross

As you might imagine, he's not proud of it. I don't think he's under some delusion that it's a work of art that, you know, is being suppressed by big, you know, pro-Palestinians, I hope. It just wasn't his time, man. He was too ahead of his time. If he had waited 25 years, then, yeah, he'd be bounding over those seats grabbing his Oscar.

Shearer

If you're trying to be serious about a matter like this, it can be just as dangerous in the wrong hands as being funny about it.

Lampanelli

To people who say, "Don't make these jokes because they're in the wrong hands," like, whose hands are right? If comics can't point out what's ridiculous in the world and the tragic in this world, who else is going to point it out? Here's someone who's not Jewish, OK. Lisa Lampanelli, at the David Hasselhoff roast. David Hasselhoff is a legend...

Cheering and applause

Lampanelli

a giant in television and music. David, your singing is huge in Germany. If they had played your music in Auschwitz, the Jews would've sprinted for those ovens. I don't think it's funny.

Zweibel

I think the initial reaction when a non-Jew makes a Holocaust joke, uh, that they're making fun of the Holocaust, and who are you to make fun of that? You weren't there. You weren't affected, OK? We were, and we're allowed to joke about it, OK? Just like, um, African Americans, uh, are allowed to-- to say certain words that--God forbid-- a big Jew from Long Island, if I said it, I'd get my ass in trouble. Jews have their turf. Gay people have their turf. Black people have their turf, and when people transgress those turfs, you can run into problems. I ain't never been in the barbershop and heard a bunch of brothers talking about Jews. Black people don't hate Jews. Black people hate white people. We don't got time to dice white people up into little groups. I hate everybody. I have a really hard time deciding who's going to get offended by what. Culture shifts, and the words or the taboo subject shifts, as well. It's no longer a taboo. You can make fun of Lincoln's assassination. You can make fun of the crucifixion. Can't make fun of Mohammed. That's still--that's still a taboo subject, you know, and you see the there are con-- and that's truly a taboo subject because if you do make fun of it, there's a good chance someone's going to throw a bomb through your window like the Danish cartoonists. Uh, I want to say, despite last week's senseless attack on the French satirical magazine "Charlie Hebdo," we all remember Sunday's inspirational march through Paris, millions standing against terrorism that made plain the message, in a free society, expression without fear of persecution is a basic right.

Man

The anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne arrested for incitement after his Facebook post that supported the attackers. He tweeted, "Je suis Charlie Coulibaly," the name of one of the attackers.

Stewart

Man! That-- Arresting someone for saying something days after a rally supporting the right of free expression, uh, it's a little weird. Maybe if we knew more about the culprit. Dieudonne is very controversial. He had a tour canceled last year because of this anti-Semitic routine that he does. Oh, man, this sucks. Je suis confused.

Silverman

When speech gets censored, it's dangerous because it makes it more taboo. It's like Catholic schoolgirls who are told they're going to go to hell if they have sex before marriage end up being slutty because it's all pent-up,

beep

Silverman

-up

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Silverman

.

Men singing in German

Silverman

Miss Hitler. They're doing a racist beauty pageant. There was a list of what you need to qualify to run for Miss Hitler. Be polite to your competitors, and you must hate Jews, but, you know, I'm always pleased to see things like that, and, uh--and like to point to them because, I mean, it--it would be better if it didn't exist, but the fact that it does, it's always nice when it's more than just a gas in the air, you know? It--it's something you can point to and see. I think it's--it's more effective when people can go, like, "Oh, my God, that's awful and hilarious. It's awful hilarious."

Isaac

Has anybody read that Nazis are going to March in New Jersey, you know? I read this in the newspaper. We should get down there, get some guys together, you know, get some bricks and baseball bats and really explain things to them. There was this devastating satirical piece on that on the op-ed page of "Times." It is devastating. Well, a satirical piece in the "Times" is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really gets right to the point, I think. Oh, but really biting satire is always better than physical force. No, no. Physical force is always better with Nazis than--because it's hard to satirize a guy with shiny boots.

People shouting

Girl

Good-bye, Jews! Good-bye, Jews! Good-bye Jews!

Louis CK

I know how movies are made, so I know somewhere there is a tape of, like, 50 little girls, all trying really hard, trying to get the "Good-bye, Jews" part. "Hi. My name is Anne Marie, and I'm with William Morris. Good-bye, Jews. Good-bye Jews." "OK, next," and then comes the girl who's amazing, and her mother has prepared her for months. She knows how to walk in the room. "Hi. My name is Louise, "and I am really happy to meet you. " The sun will come out tomorrow Bet your-- " "We just need the line, actually." "Oh, I'm sorry. "Good-bye, Jews! Good-bye, Jews!" I love when people say, "How could you make jokes? "Don't you realize what a tragic situation that is, how horrible that is? Aren't you aware that?" And I always go, "Uh, yes. I am aware of that, and that's where the jokes stem from." Are there things that go over the line? Yeah. I'm sure that there are, you know, but I don't know if my kids will consider it over the line. I have no line. I mean, I think it's a case-by-case basis. My line is--is, really, I think, child molestation. As a comedian, that's my line. Maybe it's being a parent, whatever it is. There's just nothing about child molestation or rape that I find funny. I just don't find it funny. Somebody can make it funny. There's no worse life available to a human than being a caught child molester, and yet they still do it, which from--you can only really surmise that it must be really good. I mean, from their point of view, from their--not ours-- but from their point of view, it must be amazing for them to risk so much.

George Carlin

Oh, some people don't like you to talk like that. Oh, some people'll like to shut you up for saying those things-- you know that--lots of people. Lots of groups in this country want to tell you how to talk, tell you what you can't talk about, or sometimes they'll say, "Well, you can talk about something, but you can't joke about it," say you can't joke about something because it's not funny. Comedians run into that

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George Carlin

all the time.

Charles

I wrote a "Seinfeld" script where Elaine buys a gun. We cast it, we started building the sets, and NBC said, "You can't-- you can't make that show." That was--that was more controversial to them than the masturbation episode, the idea that Elaine would go and buy a gun to protect herself at that time-- which was, uh, early Nineties-- ironically still extremely relevant today, you know, and one of the reasons it's relevant, one of the reasons it's still taboo, is because it really hasn't been dealt with. It hasn't been delved into. I don't know. I think it's-- It really depends on how horrific. Like 9/11, not funny. Is that you? That's, uh-- that's Eddie Silverman. He's my, uh, brother-in-law. He, uh--he died on September 11. Oh, my gosh. Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah, terrible. He was in the building? No. No. He--he was uptown on 57th Street. He got hit by a bike messenger.

Ross

You know, you had a desperate feeling after 9/11 that comedy was over. No one in my generation had experienced that, and I even called my manager, Bernie Brillstein at the time, and he's a Hollywood legend, and he was sort of speechless. He didn't know where to go, and when the old people don't know what to do, you start to get nervous. There was a weird feeling like, "Ooh there'll never be comedy ever again." Sounds crazy now, but that was the feeling on 9/12, 9/13, 9/14, 9/15. Like, gigs were cancelled. It was like being a pilot after 9/11 in a way, where you're like, "Am I out of work? Are we going to fly again?" "Saturday Night Live" had cancelled a show-- I wasn't with the show; I'm just a viewer at this point-- and their first live show back, they had Giuliani on, and I remember Lorne looking at him, and he says, "Are we allowed to be funny?" Why start now?

Zweibel

Lorne's asking that was so in the moment. Had enough time passed? Live... Clearly, not enough time had passed, but the laugh that it got was such a release, it was cathartic and healing.

Renee

Bernard, he used to make the morning coffee for me. Ever since he died, I sleep with the television on, and I remember, I woke up early in the morning. I heard the commentator saying a plane just hit one of the towers. I couldn't believe, and I-- I was wide awake right away, needless to say, and I thought to myself, "How lucky for Bernard that he doesn't hear these terrible things that are happening today in the world." You know, I just came back from Rwanda. The stories I heard there, also, just unimaginable. We think the Holocaust was the worst thing ever happening. Uh, the fact is that, you know, the Holocaust lasted 12 years. Within those 12 years, uh, 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. In Rwanda within 4 months, one million Tutsis were murdered, so, you know, if you think about it, and this is after the Holocaust, when we keep saying, "Never again," so that's where we are.

Cheering and applause

Rock

Now we got the Freedom Tower. Now, they should change the name from the Freedom Tower to the Never Going In There Tower because I'm never going in there. In the same spot, they put another skyscraper? Does this building duck? Whoo! What were they thinking? Like, who's the corporate sponsor, Target? Subjects come up, uh, that are, uh, seemingly inappropriate for comedy, and that's the place that's the most interesting to explore. If you could find humor in things that are absolutely not funny by most traditional standards, you are mining material that's kind of fresh. What seems to be the problem? I've contracted AIDS. How did you get that? From an African prostitute. Do you mind if I interject for a second? Sorry. I just think it's getting quite heavy, this sketch, and I just wonder if, perhaps, just for the sake of comedy, you might not want to have contracted AIDS from an African prostitute, just. Mm-hmm. Knock knock. Hi. What seems to be the problem? As I said before, I've got full-blown AIDS. Right. Do you want to know how I got it? Sure. From a well-known homosexual actor. Wow.

Merchant

Again, though, I just think cancer, though, and AIDS and famine are just not really subjects for comedy. Well, why does he get away with it, then? We don't know.

Charles

That's, to me, the definition of true taboo, is when there are consequences as a result. When people just laugh and then go back to doing what they were doing, that's not really taboo. That's socially acceptable, uh, controversial, provocative perhaps, but socially acceptable. Back in the slave days, I would've never been single. I'm 6 feet tall, and I'm strong, Colin, strong! I mean, look at me. I'm a Mandingo. Master would've hooked me up with the best brother on the plantation, and every 9 months, I'd be in the corner having a super baby, every 9 months. Every 9 months, I'd just be in the corner just popping them out, just...Shaq... Kobe... It's OK to say these things on TV... LeBron... through the broadcast. They're letting you say it. If they really felt it was dangerous...

Jones

Sinbad... if they really felt it was taboo, then you wouldn't be able to say it.

Kent Wallace

The following piece contains gratuitous use of the "N" word, and by "N" word, I mean "Nigger." Excuse me. We're looking for Clayton Bigsby. Look no further, fella. You found him.

Kent

How could this have happened-- a black white supremacist?

Bridgett

He was the only Negro we'd ever had around here, so we figured we'd make it easier by just telling him he was white.

Clayton

Niggers, Jews, homosexuals, Mexicans, Arabs, and all kinds of different Chinks stink.

Charles

All these things I've been talking about, all the things that I've worked on, we're not really transgressing. As long as the powers that be let us do it, it means we haven't transgressed. I'm glad you guys laughed at that. That does not always work. I mean, nothing works 100% of the time, right, except Mexicans. I've noticed-- That's the one? "Boo," right? "Boo, Mexicans." I hear you. You guys are preaching to the choir. Um... When they throw me in jail for making "Borat," then you know we've dealt with a taboo subject, you know? Here is a very shocking comedian, the most shocking comedian of our time, a young man who is skyrocketing to fame--Lenny Bruce. Here he is.

Bruce

By the way, are there any niggers here tonight? "Whew, what did he say?" "Are there any niggers here tonight?" "What, is he that desperate for shock value?" Ah, I think I see one nigger couple back there. Between those two niggers and three kikes. You have two spics, one mick, three kikes, and one spunky, funky honky. The point, if President Kennedy got on television every day and said, "I would like to introduce all the niggers in my cabinet," and every day you heard, "Nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger," "nigger" would lose its impact, and then it'd never make any 4-year old nigger cry when he came home from school.

Steinberg

I couldn't get over what it was to listen to Lenny Bruce. You were hearing ideas that you knew were accurate. He talked about Jesus, talked about black people, talked about gay people when no one was doing it, and in Chicago, Mayor Daley, very Catholic city, they threw him off the stage, put him in jail.

Bruce

"This is the defendant Lenny Bruce, charged "in two separate counts, giving an indecent performance. "All performances were obscene, indecent, immoral, and impure. "In the latter two performances, words such as "ass," "balls," "

beep

Bruce

," "

beep

Bruce

," "

beep

Bruce

," "

beep

Bruce

," "

beep

Bruce

," "

beep

Bruce

," "

beep

Bruce

," and "

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Bruce

" were used about 100 times in utter obscenity."

Steinberg

Sometimes it's important to be ahead of society. Just because it's uncomfortable doesn't mean that it's the wrong thing. Sometimes it means it's exactly the right thing. I think we're at a point now where the bar is really low, and in a strange way, I think it's a good thing. I think it helps us remember. Let's see. Did we look at Ricky Gervais?

Gervais

I watch hours on end of the History Channel and Discovery Channel now, just back and forth, like 6-hour stints of History Channel, Discovery Channel, back and forth. Ask me anything about sharks and Nazis. The shark's an amazing creature. It can taste and smell the slightest human secretion of, like, blood and sweat, one part in a billion, from a mile away. A shark would've found Anne Frank like that.

Zweibel

I actually don't know how this has happened, but in the last 5 years, 7 years, all of a sudden, it's been open season on Anne Frank. She had time to write a novel, for Christ's sake. It ends a bit abruptly and no sequel. Lazy.

Crunch

All gasp

Zweibel

There's this book "Hope: A Tragedy" about Anne Frank. She survived. She's pissed off. She wrote this diary that sold 32 million copies. She didn't get a nickel, and here she is. She's writing a novel, and she's not leaving this guy's attic until she's done with the novel.

Shalom Auslander

Took a while writing the scene where he first meets Anne Frank. "How dare you say you're Anne Frank? "That's an insult to the deaths of whoever, "of millions of people. I had relatives who died there," and she says, "First of all I--I didn't die in Auschwitz, jackass. "I was in Bergen-Belsen, and, by the way, um, about all those family members you lost..." and she pulls up her sleeve and shows her numbers, and the line was, "Blow me, said Anne Frank." I remember, I stopped writing, and I immediately called my wife, and I said, "I think I know what this book is about," and then I immediately called my shrink. The outrage that some people had because he made, uh, Anne Frank this crusty, old lady...

Auslander

The book I wrote before this was all about my relationship with God, and I got a certain amount of

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Auslander

for it, but among Jewish people, you can

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Auslander

on God before you can

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Auslander

on Anne Frank. Shh. Mr. Kitty, you have to be quiet or else they're gonna find you. We have greed and guilt and wars and genocides, and there's nothing we can do about it. I've read God's answers. I've read Spinoza's answers. There's no answer. They're both dead, and so the only way I can deal with the reality of-- of existence, uh, is to laugh at it.

Hanala Sagal

My mother would always bring up the Holocaust. "For you I lived through Hitler. You can't make the bed?" I said, "Ma, you ran through the forest "after finding out your whole family "got killed in gas chambers. Ma, how did you do it?" and she said, "It was no vacation." You know, that--that was how my mother spoke. Well, when I was about 18 years old, my father came home from a business trip, and we ran to him. "Daddy what did you bring?" That's all we were interested. That he came home, that wasn't important, but what did he bring? So that happened in Hungary, too? Yes, of course, so he opens this box, and out of this box comes this most beautiful bathing suit. It had a satin, shiny finish, most beautiful floral print, and I remember parading around in this bathing suit around the swimming pool, and the boys whistled at me, and my girlfriends were making, you know, nasty remarks. They were very jealous, and when they came and escorted us out of the home, I put this bathing suit under my dress. I put it on. I thought nobody will know, and that's how I left, and that's how I arrived to Auschwitz. I just couldn't take this bathing suit off my body. We were supposed to get undressed to take a shower. Then all of a sudden, I felt heat on my face. One of the Nazi soldiers slapped me. I started to cry, and I peeled this bathing suit off my body. I folded it very neatly, and I left it on the pile of my clothing, and with that bathing suit, I didn't only leave those memories. I also left my family, my friends, my neighbors, and 6 million Jews behind, so this bathing suit is always on my mind. I was going to eat that whole cheese Danish. Here. You eat it now. You. Here. Here. You deserve it. Oh, my God. Um...

Gross

This is "Fresh Air." I'm Terry Gross. My guest is Israeli writer Etgar Keret. He's written a new collection of personal essays about the 7 years between his son's birth and his father's death. His father survived the Holocaust by living in a hole with his parents for nearly two years.

Keret

I asked my father, "How come you're such a happy and optimistic and believing man?" And my father thought for a second, and he said, "You know, I have this theory that every person in this world "is the world champion in something, "but the tragedy is that most of us never discover "what we're really good at, you know? "You could be an amazing tennis player but play the piano, you know, and with me," he said, "it was only during the war that I discovered my true talent," and he said, "I'm--I'm extremely good at sleeping, "and what happened was, when we were "in the--that hole in the ground, "I slept, and every once in a while, I would wake up, "and I would say to my father, "Father, is the war over?" and he said, "No," and I would go and sleep some more."

Weinman

My parents told the stories of the Holocaust in a very matter-of-fact way, and I think that there was a comfort level for them because they had lived through the Holocaust. They had survived the very worst. They had lost-- not just lost loved ones, but in many cases, literally were forced to watch loved ones being killed. They went through the Sophie's choices. They went through all of that and yet came out at the other end and be--came to America. I think for the children, however, that for many of us, the experience of hearing those stories and not having lived through them meant that we did not vanquish the demons. The demons just got larger in our collective imaginations, in our individual imaginations, and there was a real fear around it. I found a way to tell my family story in a joyful way, in an optimistic way, but my family was a disaster, a broken family. My father, when he talked about the years of--of the Holocaust, he said, "These were the worst years of my life, "but they were years of my life, "the first girl I've ever kissed, the first cigarette I've ever smoked." There was very much the notion that we made it. Everyone who made it was part of the survivor community, and the obligation was to live well, love, eat well, have fun, get loaded at bar mitzvahs and weddings, and enjoy life because the true sin was, if you didn't after that experience, then it was a waste, and then Hitler would have had the last laugh.

Crowd cheering

Cheering stops

Weinman

Eh das Strahf mitz Hutenzecht! Der Weinerschnitzel mitt da lagerbieren, und das sauerkraut!

Brooks

Comics are the conscience of the people, and they are allowed a wide berth of activity in every direction. Comics have to tell us who we are, where we are, even if it's in bad taste.

Adenoid Hynkel coughing

Essman

Isn't laughter the greatest gift that we've been given as human beings? Isn't that what separates us as human beings? And we're the only species that laughs, I think. I don't think many animals have very good jokes. You don't see, you know, elephants laughing too much. I mean, they might have a few jokes. Maybe chimps laugh. I think chimps might laugh. Oh, they're probably slapstick jokes. Is the Holocaust funny? No. There's nothing about the Holocaust that is funny, but is there ever anything that we can't laugh about? I like dirty comedy, and I like filthy comedy, and I like, uh, bad comedy, and I like-- I do like a fat lady slipping on a banana peel and falling on her ass. I do like that. It is fu-- It's good, but I won't go-- I won't go-- You can't get me on the Holocaust. Next question, and I'll make believe that, uh, it occurred to me myself.

Renee

Look at that. Oh, how beautiful when the water hits those rocks, but nature-- nature is beautiful. Makes you forget things. It does a little bit. See, the problem is, when we are relaxing and have a nice time, that's when it comes back to us. That's true. If you work and you're under tension-- When we enjoy something... If you enjoy something-- that's when I remember it, but certain things I would love to remember, and I don't. I--I don't remember, for example, when I was separated from--from Klara, Your sister. my sister. I don't remember that moment, how I felt, you know? Was I afraid? Was I angry? Was I sad? Why don't I remember feeling anything? People who felt too much didn't make it. You may be right. I remember there was a girl in our camp who was a mime, and she used to perform for us, and I--I-- I am almost sure that when I saw her doing that, I smiled. I'm sure I did. I--I can't imagine not to.

Man

Che bella cosa Na jurnata 'e sole Ma n'atu sole Cchiu' bello, oi ne' 'O sole mio This is such a beautiful song. Sta 'nfronte a te You see, this song reminds me of a lot of things. 'O sole, 'o sole mio Sta 'nfronte a te Sta 'nfronte a te That song.

Different man

Whoo!

Man

Grazie, grazie, grazie. Before-- just before we were-- we were deported, we still were at the swimming pool and never thinking of what's going to happen to us. This song was played constantly, all day long, and I remember, there were English-- English words to it, like, "It's now or never," and every time I hear that song, I remember that-- that it was now or never, and--and we didn't know. I'm sorry. It's now or never Come hold me tight And it says, "Tomorrow will be too late." It was over. "Kiss me, my darling. Be mine tonight."

Elvis Presley

It's now or never Come hold me tight Kiss me, my darling Be mine tonight Tomorrow will be too late It's now or never My love won't wait When I first saw you With your smile so tender My heart was captured My soul surrendered... But here we are. The sun is going down, and I think it's time to go home. It's sunset for all of us, huh? It's a good thing that the sun sets slowly. Ha ha ha! It does. It does.

Presley

It's now or never Come hold me tight...

Carl

Oh, yeah. Here is a Holocaust joke I remember. We did it in the office of the "Show of Shows."

Brooks

I saw a roll of Scotch tape... I took a bunch of Scotch tape and Scotch-taped my nose, my ears, and I had all my face all Scotch-taped. And my lips were all twisted. "Goddamn Nazis." The goddamn Nazis did this to me." "The Nazis. The Nazis did this to me." "They did that to you. They maimed-- "Yeah. They-- they knocked me to the ground." "They snuck into my foxhole." "They took the Scotch tape. They put it all over my face." That was the joke. You know, I got a big laugh in the writers' room. I don't know why that tickles me. PBS Your Home for Independent Film