Dancing Was Not the Only Joy At Auschwitz

I’ve been thinking a lot about people’s responses to the viral video of a family dancing at concentration camps. Some people just freaked right out; others just waited for permission to laugh, wondering if it might be OK because the people doing it are Jewish.

Believe it or not, this isn’t the only time that levity has happened at a concentration camp. There’s absolutely no question that concentration camp prisoners told jokes and made fun of the guards — this is documented oral history.  Hitler was morbidly afraid of being laughed at, and Jewish periodicals took their revenge by making fun of him. And of course loads and loads of gallows humor, both in and out of the camps.

Below is a video about the video, which features Jane Korman explaining her reasons for making it in the first place. In her view, everything relating to the Holocaust has become “numb and numbing”, and she wanted to get people thinking about it again. She chose the right medium; there’s a fine line between provoking laughter and provoking shock.

If you do find this offensive, you still can’t legislate people’s reactions. No, really, you simply cannot tell someone whether to be amused or offended. It’s not going to work.  But it seems like people who are opposed to the video are doing just that; their “worry” about how people will take the video is just another way of trying to tell people how they should take it.

I agree with Jane Korman; whenever you say the word “Holocaust”, people have this pre-prescribed reaction that’s hardly their own. And it’s as though we somehow want every aspect of the story to be tragic — but this is simply not true.

As I’ve written before, joy and playfulness are part of what it means to be human. By insisting the story be “serious” according to our own narrow dictates, we dehumanize the people who had enough spirit to laugh and joke even while imprisoned in a concentration camp. The maker’s father, a survivor, talks about “rising from the ashes” and finding joy in horror is part of this.

I’m ending with what I think is one of the most beautiful triumphs of humanity there is: Mel Brooks’ “Springtime for Hitler.” I wonder if the video’s critics would be as outraged by this? Or is it just the fact that the latest video isn’t fictional??