[388] in Humor
HUMOR: Holocaust Humor
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Fri Jul 29 09:25:29 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 94 09:17:31 EDT
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 94 15:31:48 PDT
From: Connie_Kleinjans@Novell.COM (Connie Kleinjans)
Repeated by request.
[Copied without permission from the San Francisco Chronicle, which
reprinted it from the Jerusalem Post.]
A RESISTANCE MOVEMENT OF HUMOR
One man's look at the `spiritual weapon' of Holocaust sufferers
By Steve Lipman
Writing a serious book about humor that came out of Nazi Europe might rank
among the toughest research jobs--Holocaust literature rarely contains
listings for wit or satire.
But there was humor, nuggets to be mined with patience.
About 20 years ago, I came upon one such joke that apparently circulated in
Germany at the start of the Third Reich:
During the early stages of the Nazis' anti-Jewish persecution, a squad
of Gestapo agents raided a farm on the outskirts of Berlin. The
husband, a Jew, was taken to a concentration camp. His wife, a
gentile, remained behind. She was able to smuggle a few letters in and
out of the camp.
In one letter she complained that she was unable to plow the field and
plant her supply of seed potatoes. Her husband considered the problem
for a few days, then openly mailed a letter in which he ordered her to
forget about plowing the field. "Don't touch a single spot," he wrote.
"That's where I buried the rifles and grenades."
A few days later, several truckloads of Gestapo agents again raided the
farm. For a week they dug in the field, searching each shovelful of
earth for a trace of the guns and grenades. Finally, finding nothing,
they left. Confused, the wife wrote her husband another letter,
describing the raid. "The field," she related, "had been sifted from
one end to the other."
The husband wrote back: "Now plant the potatoes."
Intrigued, I began to collect more jokes, until they outgrew a manila
folder and became a manuscript for a book documenting how victims in
occupied Europe used humor as a spiritual weapon.
The inevitable question--why write a book on humor and the Holocaust?
My answer--because humor, in many forms, was a common, legitimate,
empowering form of resistance for Jews and gentiles throughout the war.
Because the phenomenon hasn't been documented enough, at least in English.
Because the very circumstances in which the humor was produced, in
extremis, can teach us about the Holocaust and about ourselves.
Though I have found humor in every imaginable medium, jokes are the best
examples, because of their brevity and simplicity. This is one of my
favorites:
Hitler, not being a religious man, was inclined to consult his
astrologers about the future. As the tide of war worsened, he asked,
"Am I going to lose the war?"
Answered affirmatively, he then asked, "Well, am I going to die?"
Consulting their charts, the astrologers again said yes.
"When am I going to die?" was Hitler's next question. This time the
answer was, "You're going to die on a Jewish holiday."
"But when ... on what holiday?" he asked in agitation.
The reply: "Any day you die will be a Jewish holiday."
This joke is typical of hundreds I found. The spirit is mocking, but not
bitter; the tone is more pro-victim than anti-Nazi; the message is that
evil will disappear and good will triumph.
A few more examples:
Goebbels was touring the German schools. At one, he asked the students
to recite patriotic slogans.
"Heil Hitler," shouted one pupil.
"Very good," said Goebbels.
"Deutschland uber alles," another called out.
Goebbels beamed. "Excellent. And how about a stronger slogan?"
A hand shot up. Goebbels nodded and the little boy declared: "Our
people shall live forever."
"Wonderful," exclaimed Goebbels. "What's your name, young man?"
"Israel Goldberg."
There was even a little defeatist gallows humor:
A Jew in Treblinka cautions a fellow-inmate, "Hey Moshe, don't overeat.
Think of us who will have to carry you."
The humor, rather, had a predominant messianic strain: awaiting
deliverance or a flesh-and-blood deliverer. Accommodation humor,
reflecting temporary concessions to the current situation, and questioning
humor, rhetorically showing a world without answers, were also common.
In the latter category was the tale of the Viennese Jew who goes to a
travel office to find an escape from Austria. He is shown a globe on which
nearly every country has barred entry to European Jews, and inquires,
"Haven't you got another globe?"
-end-
