The Last Laugh Page #2

---

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

Im 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 thats what

helped me stay alive.

Now the first camp,

when we entertained,

the SS, they didnt 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.

Its 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, Lets

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 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

Rate this script:3.0 / 1 vote