13/2/00

When there was nothing to laugh about

    Steve Lipman wrote a book, and then for six years wondered if anyone noticed. One day, a few weeks ago, he got a phone call from an admirer, someone who had read the book. He had read it thoroughly, could quote from it, and said the book was a major source of inspiration and understanding.
    The caller was actor Robin Williams.
    "We talked for 36 minutes," Lipman said, dazed. "He knew the book cold."
    Lipman, a 49-year-old New York journalist with the Jewish Week, was a bit ahead of his time. No one had ever before written in depth about the subject -- humor during the Holocaust -- and now, with a spate of major films touching on this touchiest of topics, the book is making an impact. It is currently being reissued. 
    Williams delved deeply into Lipman's words to prepare for his latest movie, “Jakob the Liar,” the third film in the past few months to tackle this unthinkable theme.
    “Laughter in Hell” (Jason Aronson, New Jersey and London, 1993) is a pioneering work, startling, daring and courageous. It is not merely a collection of jokes, but a sober, academic study of the sparks of introspective resistance and the resilience of human nature. In the process, the book reveals much about the Jewish mystique.
    Scorning the risk of instant death, Jews joked: at their tormentors, at themselves. "The Jews and Nazis had one thing in common: they both made fun of Jews'" Lipman says. "But for the latter, it was cruel humor. If you laugh at somebody falling down, I don't know if that's having a sense of humor.
    "The Nazis never made fun of themselves. People like that do not see any humor. They say that to a degree Goering had a sense of humor, that he could make fun of himself, but as a rule these were very humorless people."
    The research was daunting. The extant material is skimpy, academia has avoided the subject, and first-hand accounts are hard to come by.
    "I didn't feel comfortable going up to strangers and mentioning the topic. I didn't want to offend them. It was a shortcoming of the book, but it was worth it; you just can't go up to survivors and say, 'Do you have any funny stories from Auschwitz?' I wasn't going to do that.
    "I was very, very careful. If I thought people were going to be open, I said I'm researching about how people used humor as a tool in the Shoah. Sometimes they would say, oh, I had this funny story.
    "There's a man at a book store in New York, a survivor, who told me a joke about Hitler going to a Jewish doctor, asking if there's a pill that will make him younger; the doctor says no, but I can make sure you don't get any older. Lots of people shared their stories with me."
    Only one person objected to the book. "I got a call from a woman in Florida, a survivor. She said how upset she was that I was doing this, and begged me not to. I felt bad, but she was the only one.
    "Part of my research, aside from going through libraries and bookstores and magazines, was in Germany. My father came to America from Berlin as a refugee in 1938, and he was invited back in 1984. I went with him, and looked for books on humor from the Hitler period. I took a few dozen back with me. I know German pretty well -- I studied the language for eight years -- and this was a huge resource.
    "There's a chapter in the book on Werner Finck, a non-Jewish cabaret comedian in Berlin, a very funny guy, a liberal thinker who criticized the Nazis. I found several books about him in German; nothing in English."
    Lipman found evidence of all forms of humor: jokes, anecdotes, sarcasm, satire; in poetry, art, music, theater, cabarets.
    Jews were often put to death because of the jokes they told, and they told jokes with their dying breath. In a sense, there was a scant moral victory to be had by getting the last word in.

"I'M NOT interested in morbidity," Lipman says, but he could get a reputation: he's now working on a second book, on humor among the seriously ill.
    "I'm gathering anecdotes from people about how humor has helped them, and advice on the dos and don'ts of dealing with people who are ill."
    He got some thoughtful words from Robin Williams.
    "In the face of death, people say the most outrageous funny stuff," Hollywood's humor luminary told him. "There's a true story I heard about an old comic who died recently, I guess he had cancer, and a week before he died he went to his doctor and said, 'Hey doc, is it too late for a flu shot?' "
    On relating to the tragedy-stricken, Williams described his friendship with fellow actor Christopher Reeve, who is paralyzed. "My only advice is, [continue] whatever relationship you had with them before whatever happened. With Chris, before the accident, my relationship with him was always based on humor. Like his wife said, you're still you. You can't forget who they were."
    Williams told Lipman: "It's the same thing in ‘Laughter in Hell,’ those jokes are all based upon who [the Jews] were before the war, and who they're going to be if they make it through."
    Lipman says part of his motivation in the second book is religious. "There's a philosophical belief in Judaism that before God creates illness he creates the cure."
    Lipman has found that laughter is indeed the best medicine. "People who are sick: they don't want maudlin fawning, they want people to come and make them laugh, make them feel better.
    "There was a story in The Jerusalem Post Magazine about a fellow in a rehab center who was injured in war, an amputee. He said, 'Don't come and cry, come and tell me jokes.' "
    (Readers who would like to contribute to this book should contact Steve Lipman at 94-01 64th Rd. Apt. 5B, Rego Park, NY 11374, or e-mail him at SL5738@aol.com .)

HUMORING HITLER was not yet risque in 1940, when Charlie Chaplin's “The Great Dictator”  came out. But later, with Chaplin's awareness of the genocide in process, he became deeply ashamed of his comedy.
    According to Lipman, "Williams said he was trying to downplay and be more subdued when he was doing “Jakob.” But the survivors who were in the movie urged him to be true to what happened, to be looser playing the role."
    Williams, sensitive and intelligent, an immense talent in both comedy and drama, is tailor-made for a role such as this. "He told me he was interviewed by a Swiss writer last year and the writer said, 'Don't you think there's too many Holocaust books out?' And Williams turned the tables on him, bringing up the record of Switzerland during the Shoah. The writer quickly changed the subject. Williams was upset by that. You could tell he has a conscience."
    Williams was fortunate to have