Holocaust Humour, Bittere Gelechter - Bitter Laughter - The Most Taboo Issue?

Jokes about the Holocaust? Oy, how could you!  A SHANDA (Yiddish for shame)!

When my mother, Gitel (may she rest in peace), was a refugee from the Nazi Hordes and interned in a Soviet Forced Labour Camp she would sing a Yiddish song that went like this if the enemy was present.
With a firm hand rules Stalin our land,
Our blood not to shed.
Among those she trusted she would sing:
With an iron hand rules Stalin our land,
Our blood not to shed.
This of course had the opposite meaning to the 'official' version. Even though she had risked her life to sing this song it would still bring a smile to her lips decades after the war ended.

John Morreall Ph.D. writes in Humor in the Holocaust:Its Critical, Cohesive, and Coping Functions 
"During the Holocaust, humor served three main functions. First was its critical function: humor focused attention on what was wrong and sparked resistance to it. Second was its cohesive function: it created solidarity in those laughing together at the oppressors. And third was its coping function: it helped the oppressed get through their suffering without going insane."

Sigmund Freud wrote extensively about humour and its value to the human psyche. In his 1927 essay Humour (Der Humor) writes "The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure".

Ricky Gervais has been widely criticized for making jokes about the Holocaust e.g. on the Golden Globes Award Show of 2009. I would like to wish him a Yasher Koach (More Power to You)! Most people find the Holocaust to be such a huge and tragic subject that they avoid it. He has enabled many people to engage with
the material on an informal basis. Whether you approve or condemn him you wind up thinking about the Holocaust in other than habitual patterns. This is a good thing. King Lear is considered one of the greatest tragedies. But take the fool out of the play and you would have another boring story of a dad robbed blind by his children. The play would probably close after one week and the critics would write "Lear minus the bozo is a snooze oh. Don't go!"



The brilliant and beloved cartoonist Sam Gross has been vilified for writing "We Have Ways of Making You Laugh: 120 Funny Swastika Cartoons by Sam Gross." In gratitude I say to Mr. Gross "Yasher Koach" i.e. May You Be Strengthened!

Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust Expressed in Film

Holocaust Films
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Holocaust_films

My quick count of wikipedia's listings for Holocaust films by decade.

Decade	Narrative	Docum.	Total
1940's	5	9	14
1950's	6	1	7
1960's	12	8	20
1970's	22	3	25
1980's	31	24	55
1990's	50	66	116
2000's *	37	46	83
Total	163	157	320
* Only up to 2008 for Narrative and 2006 for Documentary films

Additional Films

As Seen Through These Eyes

http://www.asseenthroughtheseeyes.com/

[a Hilary Helstein film ; a Menemsha Films release].

Publication info: [Venice, Calif.] : Menemsha Films, c2009.

Performer: Narrated by Maya Angelou.

The story of a brave group of people who fought Hitler with the only weapons they had: charcoal, pencil stubs, shreds of paper, and memories etched in their minds. These artists took their fate into their own hands to make a compelling statement about the human spirit enduring against unimaginable odds.

 

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Adam Resurrected (אדם בן כלב, Adam Ben Kelev)

is an American-German-Israeli film, directed by Paul Schrader and adapted from Yoram Kaniuk's novel of the same name published in Israel in 1968. The book's original name literally means "Man, son of a dog". It was screened at several film festivals, including Telluride, Toronto, Mill Valley, AFI, Haifa Film Festival, Valladolid, The Palm Springs International Film Festival and the London Jewish Film Festival. It was released in Germany on January 22, 2009.

It follows the story of Adam Stein, a charismatic patient of a psychiatric asylum for Holocaust survivors in Israel, in 1961. Jeff Goldblum stars as Adam, alongside Willem Dafoe, Derek Jacobi and Ayelet Zurer. Several major German stars, including Moritz Bleibtreu, Veronica Ferres, Juliane Köhler and Joachim Król, play supporting roles.

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"The Reader"tells the story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who as a teenager in the late 1950s had an affair with an older woman, Hanna Schmitz, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a guard at a Nazi concentration camp in the later years of World War II. Michael realizes that Hanna is keeping a personal secret she believes is worse than her Nazi past — a secret which, if revealed, could help her at the trial. (Wikipedia)

This is a brilliant film that explores nuances of German collaboration with and abhorrence of the Holocaust. I found it empowering and enlightening in that it portrayed individuals relationships with the Holocaust both before and during in a way that I had not seen before. Very well done!

Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust

The following letter of mine was published in The National Post, Wednesday, May 05, 2010
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/story.html?id=2986966
Jewish resistance
Re: When The Fighting Stops, Conrad Black, May 1.
Conrad Black writes "[Jews] had seen their families passively (except in Warsaw) await the coming and the savagery of the Nazis, and go as victims and not warriors to the gas chambers." He believes that with the exception of the valiant fighters of the Warsaw ghetto. European Jewry did not combat the Nazis. Nothing could be further from the truth.Martin Gilbert in his book The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy, writes that "In every ghetto, in every deportation train, in every labour camp, even in the death camps, the will to resist was strong, and took many forms."

There are many other examples of the extent and heroism of Jewish resistance to the Holocaust despite the vicious and collective reprisals exacted by the Nazi oppressors.
Moses Shuldiner, Toronto.

All my father's relatives and most of my mother's perished in the Holocaust. When the Nazis invaded Poland my parents fled to the USSR and were interned in a forced labour camp. After the war they were sent to a displaced persons camp in Germany. In their name I was stunned and deeply hurt when I read Conrad Black's casual dismissal of Jewish courage. How could the one time third largest newspaper magnate in the world and a published historian make so erroneous a statment?

All my father's relatives and most of my mother's perished in the Holocaust. They fled to Russia and were interned in a forced labour camp. After the war they were sent to a Displaced Persons camp in Germany. In their name I was stunned and deeply hurt when I read Conrad Black's casual dismissal of Jewish courage. How could the one time third biggest newspaper magnate in the world and an accomplished historian make such an erroneous statement?

Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust

Title:	A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War (British title, The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy) by Martin Gilbert
Author's Summary:	A comprehensive history of the Holocaust, stressing the human aspect, and telling the story of the deliberate murder of six million men, women and children through the words and experiences both of the murderers and of their victims... The story of Jewish resistance, and of individual acts of courage and defiance, is an important and integral part of this book.

The Jewish Brigade

                  Insignia                                                                                                  Sleeve Patch

Active 1944-1946
Country United Kingdom
Branch Army
Type Infantry
Size 5,000 volunteers

After early reports of the Nazi atrocities of the Holocaust were made public by the Allied powers, the Prime Minister Winston Churchill sent a personal telegram to the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt suggesting that "the Jews... of all races have the right to strike at the Germans as a recognizable body." The president replied five days later saying: "I perceive no objection..."

After much hesitation, on July 3, 1944, the British government consented to the establishment of a Jewish Brigade with hand-picked Jewish and also non-Jewish senior officers. On September 20, 1944, an official communique by the War Office announced the formation of the Jewish Brigade Group of the British Army. The Zionist flag was officially approved as its standard (wikipedia).

Jewish Partisans 

In all, the Jewish partisans during WW II numbered between 20,000 and 30,000

Belorussia, 1943. A Jewish partisan group of the brigade named after Chkalov.

Masha Brusinska with fellow partisans before hanging.

Minsk, October 26, 1941.