SEPTEMBER 3 • 2020 | 39

that “delusionary.” 
“Ridicule didn’
t work 
when Hitler was alive and 
dangerous . . . Nor are gales 
of laughter likely to neutral-
ize the enduring vestiges of 
neo-Nazism,” he writes.
In Woody Allen’
s film 
Manhattan, a character sug-
gests going to a neo-Nazi 
demonstration “with bricks 
and baseball bats and really 
… explain things to them.”
Works crafted not to 
offend: The television series 
Hogan’
s Heroes had Nazis but 
no Holocaust. Bumbling 
Nazis ineffectively run a 
prisoner-of-war camp. Jarrod 
Tanny, in this volume, appre-
ciates how Mad Magazine in 

1967 satirized Hogan’
s Heroes 
for not mentioning Jews. 
Works by Jews to challenge 
other Jews: Comedian Lewis 
Black, on the absence of the 
Holocaust in God’
s Bible, 
writes, “You would think he 
would put out at least a pam-
phlet about the Holocaust.” 
Novelist Shalom Auslander 
invokes the Holocaust with 
savage humor to protest 
against his own Orthodox 
Jewish upbringing. In his 
novel, Hope: A Tragedy, Anne 
Frank appears as a bitter old 
woman, cursing and com-
plaining as she hides in an 
attic, working on her next 
novel.
Recent works by Jews sat-
irize, not the Holocaust, but 
popular use of the Holocaust: 
They critique those vis-
its to Anne Frank’
s house, 

or Auschwitz, by tourists. 
Especially in Israel, jokes 
challenge politicians who use 
awareness of the Holocaust to 
justify political decisions.
Ferne Perlstein and Robert 
Edwards’
 essay, “The Last 
Laugh?” describes the making 
of their own documentary 
film by the same name, about 
the morality of Holocaust 
humor. In it, a survivor, 
Renee Firestone, comments 
on the efforts of a dozen 
humorists, and recounts an 
anecdote of her own: 
Nazi “
Angel of Death” 
Josef Mengele did hideous 
experiments on twins, includ-
ing Firestone and her twin 
sister Klara. Klara did not 

survive. Mengele examines 
Renee, “
And then he says to 
me, “If you survive this war, 
you better have your tonsils 
removed. You have big ton-
sils.” 
Renee says, “So, I was 
thinking, ‘
Is he insane? 
Tomorrow I may die. I’
m 
worried about my tonsils?’
 
But when I survived and 
came back, and I thought 
about what he said, it was 
funny!” 
Renee’
s daughter Klara 
observes: “Most people 
don’
t expect survivors to 
have much humor after the 
Holocaust, but that’
s really 
not the case at all. The sur-
vivors actually have some 
of the worst gallows humor 
ever. And I guess that they’
re 
the only ones allowed to do 
that!” 

Ridicule didn’t work when 
Hitler was alive . . . Nor are gales 
of laughter likely to neutralize 
enduring vestiges of neo-Nazism.

— STEPHEN WHITFIELD

BILL & TED ARE BACK
Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, 
55, co-star in the third Bill and 
Ted movie (Bill & Ted Face the 
Music). It was supposed to 
be released to theaters, but 
plans were changed at the last 
minute and it was released to 
video-on-demand (VOD) on Aug. 
28. Here’
s the capsule plot: A 
mysterious stranger warns the 
pair that they have 78 minutes 
to create a song that will save 
all life in the universe.
The first Bill and Ted movie 
was released in 1989. Reeves, 
now 55, went on to become 
a major film star (The Matrix 
films, John Wick films). In 
several interviews, Reeves has 
noted that he went to a Jewish 
summer camp during the time 
when he (briefly) had a Jewish 
stepfather. In 1995, Reeves nar-
rated the documentary Children 
Remember the Holocaust. He 
read excerpts from diaries 
and letters written by young 
Holocaust survivors. 
Winter was born in England, 
the son of an English father and 
an American Jewish mother. 
His parents relocated to St. 
Louis in 1970, where they both 
taught dance. His parents split 
in 1973, and Alex was raised by 
his mother in New Jersey. He 
has become an important docu-
mentary director, most recently 
helming Showbiz Kids for HBO. 
The comedic film Guest 
House will be released on VOD 
on Sept. 4. Pauly Shore, 52, 
stars as a “party animal” occu-
pant of a guest house who just 
won’
t leave. Shore now lives 
in Las Vegas, where he does 
stand-up comedy. His younger 
brothers run The Comedy Store, 
a Los Angeles nightclub found-
ed by their late mother, Mitzi 

Shore. Many famous comics 
got their start there. A five-part 
Showtime documentary about 
the club, directed by Detroit 
native Mike Binder, 62, will 
premiere in October. 
Something fun: I was 
inspired to do this “top five” list 
by the recent death of a Jewish 
inventor. All five invented some-
thing critical to entertainment, 
broadly defined. My entries 
are minimal, so look them up, 
please. (1) Russell Kirsch died 
on Aug. 11, age 91. He invented 
the pixel and scanned the first 
digital photo; (2) Emile Berliner 
(1851-1929), inventor of the 
flat disc or gramophone record; 
Peter Goldmark (1906-77), 
inventor of the 33 
1/3 rpm, long 
playing record; Ralph H. Baer 
(1922-2014). He was called 
the father of the video game. 
He was critical to the creation 
of the first home video con-
sole; and Martin Cooper, now 
92. He’
s called the father of 
the handheld cellular phone. I 
had the pleasure of talking to 
Cooper a couple of years ago. 
He told me had his second bar 
mitzvah when he was 83. This 
is not unique; there is a tradi-
tion that once you reach 70, 
your biblically “allotted” lifes-
pan is up and if you reach 83, a 
second bar mitzvah is appropri-
ate. Cooper said that he studied 
with a rabbi via phone calls 
(what else?) for several months 
before his “second.” 

Arts&Life

celebrity jews

NATE BLOOM
COLUMNIST

IMDB