The Last Laugh
1
ITALIAN MUSIC:
WIND BLOWING:
You have some coffee?
Yeah I thought wed just have
but this place is so filthy
I dont want to
lay anything down
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
Theyre standing
outside his home
They're hiding, theyre waiting
for Hitler. Eight o'clock comes,
go no Hitler.
An hour goes by,
he's not home yet
Wheres Hitler?
by, hes not home yet
Now it's 8:
30 and hestill 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 its uhits
part and parcel, its
in keeping, right?
Stalin is nicer, right?
Its 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
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 dont have
a sense of humor,
just go to your grave.
Or get cremated or something.
The Holocaust itself
is not funny.
Theres 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, its
Dr. Mengele.
And we have to get undressed,
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
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,
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
Ill make matzo brei.
How many eggs do you need?
Why dont 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
recipe is better than
your recipe
I mean this is an absurdity but
its certainly humorous.
And were you laughing when
you were doing it, at times?
No, we were not laughing, but
Now you know this will
never happen.
MUSIC:
235. Ghetto diary,
October 29, 1941.
Every day at the Art
Caf on Leszno Street
one can hear songs and
satires about the police,
and even the Gestapo.
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.
Nazis cannot understand,
humor.
Humor is the only thing
they dont understand.
They dont understand
life either.
Humor is a way of dealing
with an unbearable reality.
Its a way of protesting,
its a way of keeping
your dignity
when you have to do things
that you dont want to do.
So if you do them and you keep
your humor its like
saying, you know,
Im 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
he was very happy
because he wasnt that
proficient in English
in 1952. He was getting
better.
And now he speaks it as
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 wenteven the
first camp
campI started to sing for
the people who were there,
the prisoners.
People are constant.
Consistent.
And if you
were funny
before, youll be funny during,
I was 16 years old when I was
arrested and sent to the camp.
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"The Last Laugh" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 23 Apr. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/the_last_laugh_20631>.
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