The Holocaust Documentation & Education Center encourages you to view the following program offered by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: How Humor Helped Heal the Pain of the Holocaust.
The program was featured as part of the USHMM Facebook Live Series.
Jewish comedian Robert Clary, who was imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp and later acted in the 1960s sitcom Hogan’s Heroes, says that making people laugh during the Holocaust saved his life. Humor helped some people cope with the atrocious conditions in ghettos and concentration camps as they suffered under Nazi brutality. It served as a form of protest and a way to maintain dignity in the most undignified of circumstances. – USHMM.
Speaker: Ferne Pearlstein, Director, The Last Laugh
Moderator: Dr. Edna Friedberg, Historian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The program can be viewed by clicking here.
