Original subtitles

ITALIAN MUSIC

WIND BLOWING

You have some coffee?

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.

for us but my hands are not that clean

- That's okay - So if you want the napkin.

- I don't need it. -

- So use this napkin, okay?

Auschwitz wasn't cleaner than this!

I knew you'd say that.

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. Eight o'clock 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!

So what is this supposed to be? Crossing lines?

Being in bad taste?

So should I start the interview with…

Heil Hitler! Is that good?

OK. I mean it’s uh…it’s

part and parcel, it’s in keeping, right?

Stalin is nicer, right? It’s easier…

But this is the guy who made me money, so I stick 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,

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.

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.

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 are they checking us?

What is the doctor checking?

I mean that was itself funny.

But I come in front of him

and he

he puts his hand on my shoulder

and he says to me in German,

“Genug Speck noch”

“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, I was thinking “Is he insane?

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

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 four.

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! - They cooked a lot!

And so, I mean, the absurdity of some of this stuff is humorous.

So they're making parties and they're talking about

the recipes for it, andand 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.”

MUSIC

235. Ghetto diary, October 29, 1941.

Every day at the Art Café on Leszno Street

one can hear songs and satires about the police,

and even the Gestapo.

The Typhus epidemic itself is the subject of jokes.

Typhus is a subject of jokes!

It is laughter through tears, but it is laughter.

This is our only weapon in the ghetto.

The only weapon in the ghetto. Laugh at the death.

Humor is the only thing the Nazis cannot understand.

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.

Humor is a way of dealing with an unbearable reality.

It’s a way of protesting,

it’s a way of keeping your dignity

when you have to do things that you don’t want to do.

So if you do them and you keep your humor it’s like

saying, you know,

I’m still human.

(Singing in Yiddish/French) “Bei mir bistu shein…”

Ce la signifie, vous etes pour moi plus que la vie

That's all you ar going to hear.

I met Robert Clary…

I spoke a little French, so he was very happy

because he wasn’t that proficient in English

in 1952. He was getting better.

And now he speaks it as if he really knows it.

Robert Clary was in the camps,

and 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—

camp—I started to sing for the people who were there,

the prisoners.

People are constant.

Consistent.

And if you were 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 the camp.

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,

a sister with her husband and two kids.

They all went to the gas chambers.

Out of thirteen of my immediate family

I’m the only one who came back.

TRUMPET PLAYING

For the ten minutes that I worked,

or fifteen minutes that I sang,

they forgot where they were, and that was

the most important thing.

And that’s what helped me stay alive.

Now the first camp, when we entertained,

the SS, they didn’t come.

We only entertained for the inmates.

But the second camp, why the SS came to see us,

all I can deduct then is they

they had such a terrible life hitting us and killing us

that they wanted to be entertained too.

SINGING IN GERMAN

The camps, in certain cases, had a cabaret.

But they would never put on anything

that mentioned gas chambers,

or the mass murder squads

It was subversive by nature,

but you had to be careful how you did it

so the SS guards who came

would not understand that they

were the ones being spoken about.

It’s the kind of humor that will make you cry.

Really the underpinning was sadness.

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 it?” and so and so. Of course,

we

imagined that we lived in a normal time.

SINGING

There was a song which we 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.

What did you do all morning? - What did I do all morning?

I don’t know, I just talked my head off.

You did? Did you talk about how funny the camps were?

Oh God yes. I said it was hilarious!

From the moment we put our feet on the ground!

We were laughing. We never stopped laughing.

We woke up in the morning at three,

even when they made us walk…

Even when they made us walk in the middle of the night,

we laughed and said “Ha, ha, ha, ha!

You’ll get your day!”

DRUM BEATS

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

What television show?

About the concentration camp. - What concentration camp?

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!”

You think that “Hogan’s Heroes” was about a concentration camp?

It was about a camp.

There were no Jews in there. 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 Heroes” was about prisoners of war in a stalag.

It was not about genocide,

it was not Jews going to the gas chambers.

No, of course not! We knew that! That’s why it was so funny!

No, but a lot of people always ask me,

“How could you have done ‘Hogan’s Heroes’

after what you went though?”

ROBERT CLARY SINGING IN FRENCH

- How did it end? - We all died!

Now, when you’re gonna die,

are you going to be in a Jewish cemetery?

Are you going to be buried?

- Next to my husband, I have a place next to my husband.

Not me. 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 with my life.

Now, you see… I cannot imagine a Jew to be cremated.

Now are you going to stop talking to me?

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 say... uh...

“I’m going to be cremated,” he said, “You cannot do that.”

So I said, “What about my parents?”

And that

cut him down.

I’m going to be cremated and then

the fish are going to eat me.

They’re going to say, “Mmm, what wonderful French food yum, yum!”

Little do they know I have Polish blood in me!

We’re gonna hitchhike up to the Catskills

We call the Highway Route 17…

We’re going to hitchhike up to the mountains

Up to the finest resorts we have ever seen.

When I was a kid in the mountains,

I would do

SHOUTING IN MOCK GERMAN

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 shit

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.

We would go

and my mother would laugh like I had never seen her laugh.

There was a release,

because 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! Did you hear about the man in room 302,

he came back and found his best friend in bed with his wife.

He said, ‘Morris, I have to, but you?’”

I would write

some jokes for them,

how my uncle was an all year-round camper—at Auschwitz.

Okay.

And they would laugh in the car,

or the band would laugh,

but there’s not a chance in hell

that you could tell that to an audience.

I was very brave then.

Maybe I’m not so brave now, but

I was very brave then, because

it was in questionable taste

in 1948

when I worked in the… Right?

Two years or three years after the end of the war,

to be doing uh

Hitler bits.

Time makes a difference.

Obviously no one cares if you make Inquisition jokes.

The Inquistion, let's begin

The Inquistion, look out sin

We have a mission

to convert the Jews

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

Don’t be boring…

Five centuries had gone by,

and so

it was okay.

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

given credit 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.

MUSIC

Danke schoen,

darling, danke schoen

Thank you for

all the joy and pain

Picture shows,

second balcony

was the place we'd meet

Second seat,

go Dutch treat,

you were sweet

Danke schoen, darling, danke schoen

Thank you for seeing me again

Though we go on our separate ways

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

Shalom aleikhem! My name is Deb Filler,

and my father was a survivor of the Holocaust,

the Shoah.

Dad always felt isolated, being in New Zealand.

So one of the things that he used to do was

turn on the TV and 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.”

And I’d say “Dad,

Cat Stevens? What are you talking about,

he’s not Jewish.”

He’d say “Yeah, sure he’s Jewish.

His name was probably Steven Katz and he switched it.”

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

Anyway, so my father,

he would always like to change everything into Yiddish.

So, what about

SINGING No maidel, no kvetch

Oh, I’m sorry, I’m not going to do that.

Gerhardt, you said you saw it in the camps— my father saw it too

that there was a possibility

in the camps to make a joke

or a sketch or a laugh. Is it possible that it’s

There were people that were

naturally humorous,

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.

Sorry, I didn’t find any humor

at all,

just sadness

and tragedy.

I don’t know what’s funny about anything about the Holocaust.

I was

a child survivor,

so I didn’t suffer like some of the older people here

uhm

It’s hard for me to understand how they could see the

humor in the Holocaust?

Or do you mean after the Holocaust?

There were funny incidents that happened after,

I can tell you a whole bunch of those.

But uh, during the time you were

deprived of a normal human life?

Boy!

I can’t even imagine that.

SINGING Volare,

oh oh… wha dooba dooba doobab

Cantare, oh oh…

Volare,

oh oh…

Cantare,

oh oh oh…

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?

Because I remember for so many

youngsters

who were perished and they

cannot 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! You cannot

No, no, no no!

You cannot live in the shadow 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 three great grandchildren.

Could Hitler imagine

that I will survive and have three great-grandchildren?

I mean, that’s my revenge.

We’ve struck gold!

Kiss it, kiss it. KISSING SOUND

You found a flop.

A flop? That’s putting it mildly.

We found a disaster, a catastrophe,

an outrage, a guaranteed to close in one night beauty.

Let’s see it!

- 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.

Shhh! 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 SHARPTLY

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.

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 - Thank You.

“Springtime for Hitler?”

So early after the war?

“Hitler” Auditions

Nazis dancing?

“Hitler” Auditions

I got a lot of mail,

from Jews mostly.

How could you do this?

How could we see Hitler,

how could you show the swastika, how could you…?

SINGING 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

SINGING ...faster pace.

...look out here comes the Master race...

But then after a while you get the joke,

you understand what’s funny about it.

When 'The Producers' was a movie,

it was daring.

Goosestep’s the new step today…

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 in such bad taste becomes a Broadway hit

because it’s not in bad taste anymore!

- Well,

talk about bad taste!

SINGING

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.

SINGING

LIGHTS OFF

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 am here.

This almost looks comfortable.

In 1933,

when I was nine 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 blonde 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!”

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 archives,

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 were doing,

so we had to get rid of her.”

That’s how I found,

53 years after

liberation, how I found out

that my sister was shot after

they experimented on her.

CLOSING DOOR

OLD CAMERA ROLLING

- Is that who I think it is?

- Uh, yes, that’s Adolf Hitler in a home movie.

- Looks like Mel Brooks.

LAUGHTER

- Anything I could do to deflate Germans—

anything—I did.

WHISTLING

Peeping Times, home movies of Hitler.

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 matter…”

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?

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

DRUM ROLL

- Schultz!

- You Dummkopp.

Bugs Bunny was making fun of Nazis,

the Three Stooges were making fun of Nazis,

yhe Marx Brothers were making fun of Nazis.

And this was during World War II!

- Heil Hitler!

- Heil Hitler! - Heil Hitler!

- Heil Hitler!

- Heil myself!

Anyone who is in a position of extreme authority

is great to make fun of,

because they’re pompous. T

here’s an arrogance to being in that position.

MUSIC

- 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 army we made

jokes about our commanders.

they could just order us to do whatever they wanted us to do.

- 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 Holocaust jokes.

Do you know any Holocaust jokes?

No. I can’t go there. I can’t…

I personally,

who has done a musical

called “The Inquisition,”

with Jews floating around and

being dunked in water and tortured

I cannot go there.

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

the joke’s always about something else, and

then the punchline

is the shocker.

That’s when you mention Hitler, or the Holocaust

or, you know.

“Auschwitz” is a funny punchline

not a funny topic, but a funny punchline.

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.

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 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 had this thought someone

else must’ve had this 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 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?”

- 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 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.”

And she said, “Well what do you want your code word to be?”

And I just thought of the worst thing I could think of and said,

“I don’t know, just say, Holocaust.”

And the next day we’re making love in the morning,

and she’s so beautiful and so lovely after two minutes,

I’m about to have an orgasm

and suddenly she whispers in my ear,

she says, “I can’t believe those poor six million Jews

who died in the ovens at Auschwitz.”

And I was like, “What the hell are you talking about?

I didn’t want a Wikipedia printout right now!”

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 a silhouette

and then they say,

“This man is responsible for the deaths of six million Jews.

Is it… Ted Danson?

Patrick Duffy?

My lesbian niece, their whole family is very Jewy,

and she called me up and she was like,

“Aunt Sarah,

did you know that Hitler killed sixty million Jews?”

And I

corrected her and I said,

“Ya know, I think, um,

I think he’s responsible for killing

six million Jews.”

And she said “Oh yeah, six million,

I knew that, but seriously, I mean, what’s the difference?”

“The difference is,

sixty million is unforgivable, young lady.”

- Is six million forgivable?

- Well, 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. Or, not to Jews.

Maybe true.

Somebody might bring up,

how far

are comics allowed to go?

Are they allowed to go as far as Sarah Silverman?

AWARD CEREMONY AND PEOPLE CLAPPING

Finally, a Lifetime Achievement Award for Mel Brooks.

Wow! What an elegant way to say,

“Hey! Let’s wrap it up.”

LAUGHTER

She made a joke about the Holocaust.

- What do the Jews hate most about the Holocaust?

- What? - The cost!

LAUGHTER

SIGHS I couldn’t, you know

SIGHS

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 joke probably would’ve gotten the biggest “whoa!”

of all time.

- Heidi Klum! - Wooow

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’ve said it!

I couldn’t have said it!

It doesn’t mean that it isn’t funny.

Even the rhythm is good. But, uh

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

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.

- The cause of the sinking of the Titanic.

PING

- Uh, what is an iceberg?

No, I’m sorry! The correct response is,

“What were the Jews.”

- Hello, Mr. Alexander

- This is really inappropriate,

his is offensive!

I’m sorry, I can’t I can’t follow this.

I’m sorry, I can’t go on.

- Didn’t you do Nazi stuff on “Seinfeld”?

That was an entirely different situation.

I think Jerry Seinfeld has been known to say

that Standards & 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

contain yourself within the boundaries

and still truly be funny

and “Seinfeld” to me is the classic example.

Medium turkey chili.

LAUGHTER

The one regret I do have

of all of the years at Standards,

in terms of Holocaust humor,

is the Soup Nazi.

- I didn’t get any bread. - Just forget it, let it go.

I think the notion of ‘Nazi

being used as 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!

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?

Well, when I first saw the outline

for the “Survivor” episode you know, there’s a

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 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.

So? Where’s the other survivor?

So here we are in a region of Australia

where of the world’s ten most deadly snakes,

nine of them inhabit this region.

It was harrowing.

- 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.

Look, I’m saying we spent 42 days trying to survive.

We had very little rations, no snacks…

- Snacks?

What are you talking, snacks?

We didn’t eat, sometimes for a week!

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.

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 survivor!

-I’m a survivor!

I don’t think this is funny.

We expect more

from Jews,

a greater sensitivity, and maybe that’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!

RAIN

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 watched anything else.

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 more acceptable

it’s not comfortable, but it’s more acceptable.

APPLAUSE

This is song called “In My Country There is Problem.”

GUITAR

SINGING In my country there is problem

SINGING And that problem is transport

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.

In my country there is problem

And that problem is the Jew

They take everybody’s money

They never give it back

People need that—subconsciously they need

they have that need to sort of tap that dark part,

that id-like part of their psyche.

SINGING Throw the Jew down the well

So my country can be free

You must grab him by his horns

Then we have a big party

Sacha Baron Cohen says,

“I am exposing, I am airing prejudice.”

The only problem is,

that the people that are laughing

aren’t laughing at the prejudice

they’re applauding the prejudice!

When the joke is “Throw the Jews down the well!

Kill the Jews”… a) it’s not funny.

But even if it was funny, they’re applauding it!

SINGING Throw the Jew down the well

So my country can be free

AUDIENCE SINGING So my country can be free

You must grab him by his horns

AUDIENCE SINGING You must grab him by his horns

Then we have a big party

My

dialogue or disagreement with Sacha Baron Cohen

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.

LAUGHTER

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 if I’m going to sue an Arab,

I’m going to get a guy who’s full of hate.

APPLAUSE

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.

Uhm

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 buffoon,

a bit of an idiot.

You can’t control

how your joke will be inferred.

You know

I had a friend Tom Gianas

who would call it “mouth full of blood laughs.”

You know, where they’re laughing at the wrong thing

And 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 sheAUDIENCE LAUGHS

she had the tattoo, you know,

the number, and thank God she was

at one of the better concentration camps.

She had a vanity number, it said

“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 uhm

you know, a sophisticated audience

would understand that and

maybe a less sophisticated audience

may not. I’m not saying that I’m sophisticated.

But uhm,

what are the dangers of that? That maybe a group of people

will think that the Holocaust didn’t happen?

I think that’s worth the risk

I think it’s worth the risk.

DRUM ROLL

- Oh my goodness, Joan.

- I am so sorry I’m late, and I apologize.

- Why were you late?

- Yeah, this is, I 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 two and a half hours,

and I’m thinking, you know, the Germans killed six million Jews,

you can’t fix a fucking carburetor?

AUDIENCE LAUGHING

SIGHS You know, it’s tough,

she’s not here to defend herself, although

she defended herself strong enough for a long time.

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 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!”

MUISC

- Hi.

- Good morning, how are you?

- I’m okay.

I need a red rose, can I get one?

Yes, yes sure.

One single red rose? -Yes.

Oh my god. - Here you go.

How much is it? - Oh, no, no, no charge.

CALM MUSIC

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

and think of the dark side of life all the time.

You just can’t.

You can’t survive that way.

bring a rose because that’s what he used to bring me every day,

one rose.

I will never forget that.

CLEARS HER THROAT

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.

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 was 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.

To protect his family,

this loving father

has to think fast on his feet.

To turn the hard truth

into a simple game.

CHILD LAUGHS

Life is Beautiful.

Life is Beautiful is the worst movie ever made.

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 absolutely ludicrous.

Achtung!

SOLDIER SPEAKING GERMAN

SOLDIER SPEAKING GERMAN

SOLDIER SPEAKING GERMAN

He laughs and jokes and kids around,

and that’s how everything turns out okay.

SOLDIER SPEAKING GERMAN

Life is Beautiful is absolutely brilliant.

It portrays 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.

SoCHUCKLES

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 such a sense of reality.

And yet

I understood when there were survivors who said, “No,

it’s unacceptable.”

I would think Jerry Lewis

would see Life is Beautiful as a

shittier version 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.

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 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 a material that you’d have to be so sublimely

careful with

whether you’re being funny or not.

The idea itself

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.

It sort of luxuriated in this mawkish sentimentality

which just made it ludicrous. I think I said said that it was

like seeing a

Tijuana velvet clown painting of the Holocaust.

CIRCUS MUSIC

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, uhm

pro-PalestiniansLAUGHS

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 the those seats, grabbing his Oscar.

If you’re trying to be serious about a matter like this

it could be just as dangerous

in the wrong hands as being funny about it.

MUSIC

To people who say,

“Don’t make these jokes ‘cause 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,

Lisa Lampanelli at the David Hasselhoff roast.

David Hasselhoff is a legend!

AUDIENCE APPLAUDS

I 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.

I think the initial reaction

when a non-Jew makes a Holocaust joke

is that they’re making fun of the Holocaust,

and who are you to make fun of of that?

You weren’t there,

you weren’t affected, okay?

We were and we are allowed to joke about it, okay?

Just like um

African Americans are allowed 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 a barbershop

and heard a bunch of brothers talking about Jews.

Black people don’t hate Jews black people hate white people.

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

We don’t got time to dice white people into little groups!

AUDIENCE APPLAUDS

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—

crucifixion—you can’t make fun of Mohammed.

That’s still a taboo subject,

you know. And that’s truly a taboo subject

because if you do make fun of if 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 attacks 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.

The anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonné

arrested for incitement after his Facebook post

that supported the attackers.

He tweeted

“Je suis Charlie Coulibaly,” the name of one of the attackers.

Man!

Arresting someone for saying something

days after a rally supporting the right of free expression

eeeeeh, it’s a little weird.

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

Maybe if we knew more about the culprit

Dieudonné is very controversial,

he had a tour canceled last yea

because of this anti- Semitic routine that he does.

Oh man, this sucks!

Je suis confused.

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

- 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, fucked up shit.

MUSIC

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 like to point to them because

I mean, it would be better

if it didn’t exist, but

the fact that it does, it’s always nice that it’s

more than just a gas in the air,

you know?

It’s something you can point to and see.

I think it’s more effective when people can go,

“Oh my god, that’s awful, and hilarious.

It’s awful hilarious.”

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.

Oh, but really biting satire

is always better than physical force.

No, no, physical force is always better with Nazis.

It’s hard to satirize a guy with shiny boots.

DRUM

PEOPLE SHOUTING

Goodbye Jews! Goodbye Jews! Goodbye Jews!

I know how movies are made, so I know somewhere there is a tape

of like fifty little girls

AUDIENCE LAUGHING

trying really hard,

AUDIENCE LAUGHINg

trying to get the “goodbye Jews” part.

“Hi my name is Anne Marie and I’m with William Morris,

‘Goodbye Jews,’

AUDIENCE LAUGHING

‘Goodbye 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.

GOODBYE JEWS! GOODBYE JEWS!”

AUDIENCE LAUGHING

I love when people say,

“How could you make jokes?

Don’t you realize what a

ragic 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, uhm,

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-bycase basis.

My line 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 molestatio

n 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 you can only really surmise

that it must be really good.

I mean, from their point of view.

AUDIENCE GROANS

From their—not ours—but from their point of view,

it must be amazing for them to risk

so much.

Oh, some people don’t like you to talk like that,

some people 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

want to tell you what you can’t talk about.

Or sometimes they’ll say you can talk about something

but you can’t joke about it.

Say you can’t joke about something cause it’s not funny.

Comedians run into that shit all the time.

I wrote a “Seinfeld” script where Elaine buys a gun.

We cast it,

we started building the sets,

and NBC said, “You can’t make that show.”

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 in the early ‘90s.

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

it really depends on how horrific.

Like 9/11?

Not funny.

Is that you?

It’s, uh,

it’s Eddie Silverman,

he’s my, uh, brother-in-law.

He, uh,

he died on September 11th.

Oh my gosh.

Oh, I’m so sorry.

Yeah, terrible.

He was in the building?

No, no, he was uptown on 57th Street.

He got hit by a bike messenger.

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

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 were like,

“Am I out of work? Are we going to fly again?”

“Saturday Night Live” 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?

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

Lorne’s asking that was so in the moment.

Had enough time passed?

Live! From...

Clearly not enough time had passed.

But the laugh that it got was such a release.

It was cathartic and healing.

WATER RUNNING

Bernard 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... 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 that ever

happened.

The fact is that,

you know, the Holocaust lasted twelve years.

Within those twelve years,

six million Jews were murdered

in the Holocaust.

In Rwanda,

within four 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.

APPLAUSE

Now we got the Freedom Tower

They should change the name from the Freedom Tower

to the Never Going In There Tower.

AUDIENCE LAUGHING

Because I’m never going in there.

AUDIENCE LAUGHING

In the same spot they put another skyscraper?

Does this building duck?

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

What were they thinking?

Who’s the corporate sponsor, Target?

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

Subjects come up that are

seemingly inappropriate for comedy,

and that’s the place that’s the most interesting to explore.

If you can 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,

from an African prostitute, just.

Knock knock.

Hi, what seems to be the problem?

As I said before, I’ve got full-blown AIDS.

Right.

You want to know how I got it?

Sure.

From a well-known homosexual actor.

Wow.

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.

That’s to me the definition of true taboo,

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...

controversial, provocative perhaps,

but socially acceptable.

Back in the slave days,

I would’ve never been single

I’m six 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 nine months I’d be in the corner having a superbaby.

Every nine months!

Every nine months I’d just be in the corner

just popping them out.

Just: Shaq!... Kobe!...

It’s okay to say these things on TV,

- LeBron!

- through the broadcast media

They’re letting you say it.

If they really felt it was dangerous,

if they really felt it was taboo,

then you wouldn’t be able to say it.

The following piece contains gratuitous use of

the “N” word.

And by “N” word,

I mean “Nigger.”

Excuse me, we are looking for Clayton Bigsby.

Look no further, fella, you found him.

How could this have happened?

A black white supremacist.

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.

Niggers, Jews, homosexuals,

Mexicans, Arabs,

and all kinds of different Chinks stink!

All these things I’ve been talking about,

all the things that I’ve worked on,

we’re not truly 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…

AUDIENCE BOOS

That’s the one? “Boo!” Right, “Boo, Mexicans!”

I hear you, you guys are

preaching to the choir.

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

When they throw me in jail for making Borat,

then you know we’ve dealt with a taboo subject.

Here he is, a very shocking comedian,

the most shocking comedian of our time,

a young man who is skyrocketing to fame:

Lenny Bruce!

By the way, are there any niggers here tonight?

“What did he say?

Are there any niggers here tonight?

What, is he so 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 would never make any four-year old nigger cry

when he came home from school.

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.

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, cocksucker, cunt,

fuck, motherfucker, piss, screw, shit, and tits

were used about one hundred times in utter obscenity.

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?

I watch hours on end of the History Channel

and Discovery Channel now,

just back and forth,

like six hour stints of History Channel, Discovery Channel,

back and forth. Ask me anything about sharks and Nazis.

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

The shark’s an amazing creature. It can taste and smell

the slightest human secretion of blood and sweat,

one part in a billion,

from a mile away.

A shark would’ve found Anne Frank like that

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

I actually don’t know how this has happened,

but in the last five years, seven 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.

EXPLOSION AND DOOR BREAKING

CRUNCHING OF A CRISP

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.

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,

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 Anne Frank

this crusty old lady!

The book I wrote before this

was all about my relationship with God,

and I got a certain amount of shit for it.

But among Jewish people,

you can shit on God before you can shit 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.CHUCKLES

And so the only way I can deal with

the reality of existence

is to laugh at it.

MUSIC

HATCH CLOSING

My mother would always bring up the Holocaust.

“For you I lived through Hitler, you can’t make the bed?”

LAUGHTER

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 was how my mother spoke.

Well, when I was about

18 years old my father came home from a business trip,

and we run 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 are making, you know,

nasty remarks, they were very jealous.

And when they came and escorted 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 six million Jews

behind.

So this bathing suit is always on my mind.

TRUMPET PLAYING MELANCHOLIC MELODY

I was going to eat that whole cheese Danish.

Here, you eat it now.

Here, here, you deserve it.

Oh my God.

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 seven 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.

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 a 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 extremely good at sleeping.

And what happened was when we were in 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.”

My parents told the stories of the Holocaust

in a very matter-of-fact way.

And I think there was a comfort level for them

because they had lived through the Holocaust, they had survived

they had lost

not just lost loved ones, but in many cases literally were forced

to watch loved ones being killed.

They went to the “Sophie’s choices,”

they went through all of that and yet came

out at the other end and 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

they years of the Holocaust,

he said,

“These were the worst years of my life,

but they were years of my life.

The first girl I ever kissed,

the first cigarette I 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.

CHEERING MASS

SPEECH IN MOCK GERMAN

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.

COUGHS RIDICULOUSLY

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 laug

Ahh, 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?

like dirty comedy,

and I like filthy comedy,

and I like uum

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 funny, it’s good.

But I won’t go…

you can’t get me on the Holocaust.

Next question!

And I’ll make believe that it occurred to me myself.

MUSIC

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 having 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…

- Yeah, that’s when I remember it.

But certain things I would love to remember and I don’t.

I don’t remember, for example,

when I was separated

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 am almost sure

that when I saw her doing that,

I smiled.

I’m sure I did.

I can’t imagine not to.

Che bella cosa na jurnata 'e sole,

Ma n'atu sole

Chiù bello, oje 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.

Sta 'nfronte a te!

Sta 'nfronte a te!

That song. 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

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 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 SINGING

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?

- Sunset…CHUCKLES

It’s a good thing that the sun sets slowly.

It does,

It does.

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

Oh yeah, here’s a Holocaust joke I remember.

We did it in the office of the “Show of Shows.”

I saw a roll of Scotch tape…

I took a bunch of Scotch tape

and Scotch taped my nose, my ears

I had all my face Scotch taped

My nose smashed and

my eyebrow covered my eye

and my lips were all twisted

“Goddamn Nazis!

The goddamn Nazis did this to me!

The Nazis!”

“The Nazis! The Nazis did this to me!”

“They did that to you, they maimed….?”

“Yeah 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.

And I still have a little piece of my upper lip

that hurts from that. That was about fifty years ago.

An old concentration camp survivor buys a lottery ticket.

He wins 200 million dollars.

The reporter is talking to him and he says,

“Uh, well, tell me what you’re going to do with the money.”

And the old Jewish man says,

“Well, I’m going to erect a

gigantic statue honoring Hitler.”

And the reporter goes,

“Wait a minute, you were in the concentration camps,

why would you erect a statue honoring Hitler?”

And he goes “Where do you think I got the number?”

DRUM

There’s a joke I heard,

then I heard it was a true story about

Walter Matthau and his wife.

Do you know what I’m going to tell you?

Well here’s the joke.

Old, elderly couple go to, uh,

they go to a tour of Auschwitz.

They’re on like a tour, you know,

like in the ‘90s, whatever.

And they

get in a big fight

and they’re not speaking to each other the entire tour

And they get back on the bus,

and the husband says,

“You’re right, I was wrong, I’m sorry.”

And the wife says,

“Oh, now you’re sorry, now that you ruined Auschwitz for me!”

MUSIC

DRUM ROLL

MUSIC