The Last Laugh Page #2

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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 dont 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!

Youll get your day!

DRUM BEATS:

Lets talk about the television

show you used to do.

What television show?

About the concentration camp.

- What concentration camp?

Who walked into a

producers office

and said, Heres the idea:

a group of soldiers in a Nazi

prison camp. Its a comedy!

You think that Hogans Heroes

was about a concentration camp?

It was about a camp.

There were no Jews in there.

I didnt play a Jewish kid.

No, there were no Jews in it,

but there were Nazis in it.

- Potato soup?

- Thank you.

Hogans 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!

Thats why it was so funny!

No, but a lot of

people always ask me,

How could you have

done Hogans Heroes

after what you went though?

ROBERT CLARY SINGING IN FRENCH

- How did it end?

- We all died!

Now, when youre 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. Im not going

next to my wife.

- So where are you going?

In the ocean. Even

though Im a Pisces and

I:

dont know how to swim.

NO! Youre not going

to be cremated.

- Yes I am.

- No youre not.

Dont 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

youll change your mind.

I... I... Yes, absolutely. You

know what I said to Rabbi Hier?

Once, we were

talking about that,

I say... uh...

Im going to be cremated, he

said, You cannot do that.

So I said, What

about my parents?

And that

cut him down.

Im going to be

cremated and then

the fish are going to eat me.

Theyre going to say, Mmm, what

wonderful French food yum, yum!

Little do they know I

have Polish blood in me!

Were gonna hitchhike

up to the Catskills

We call the Highway Route 17

Were 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, thats not

in such good taste.

You know

And Id say

I dont care.

I really dont give a sh*t

whats 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 wouldnt

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 werent the Other.

I started writing jokes

for stand-up comedians

who played in the

Catskill Mountains.

I was 21,

they were like 50,

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 camperat Auschwitz.

Okay.

And they would

laugh in the car,

or the band would laugh,

but theres not a

chance in hell

that you could tell

that to an audience.

I was very brave then.

Maybe Im 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 wouldve been in

a lot of trouble.

But enough time had gone by

Confess

Dont be boring

Five centuries had gone by,

and so

it was okay.

Its 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,

Ive seen all kinds of people

given credit for

that comment.

I dont know that thats

necessarily true,

and I dont know what

that time limit is.

I dont 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,

havent seen you for a while

Im glad youre 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,

Thats Barbara

Eden, shes Jewish.

And thats Captain Spock,

the guy with the pointy

ears, hes Jewish.

And thats Cat

Stevens, hes Jewish.

And Id say Dad,

Cat Stevens? What are

you talking about,

hes not Jewish.

Hed say Yeah,

sure hes 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, Im sorry, Im 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 its

There were people that were

naturally humorous,

the way they behaved.

Like, when the SS guard

came, the Kapo carried on

you shouldve 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 dont think

we would have survived.

Sorry, I didnt find

any humor

at all,

just sadness

and tragedy.

I dont know whats funny about

anything about the Holocaust.

I was

a child survivor,

so I didnt suffer like some

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