Into the Void

Humor in the Holocaust

May 10th, 2008

“…Look, without humor we would all have committed suicide. We made fun of everything. What I’m actually saying is that that helped us remain human, even under hard conditions.”
– Holocaust survivor, quoted by Dr. Chaya Ostrower, PhD of Beit Berl College, Israel
in Humor as a defense mechanism in the Holocaust

I came across the above quote this morning while checking the Pendulum listing on dmoz.org. Holocaust humor? WHAT????

The article above is about the victims of the death camps using humor to stay sane in an inhuman, insane situation. Humor is a great coping mechanism. If it worked for people who lived in the shadow of a crematorium, it can certainly work for us.

No, there was nothing funny about the Holocaust. There is nothing funny about genocide. There is nothing funny about a thing that goes beyond hate, that stigmatizes, dehumanizes, and then brings formerly rational human beings to methodically exterminate their next-door neighbors.

“Holocaust” means “complete burning.” The word Holocaust is technically used to refer to the six million Jewish victims. The goal was to exterminate an entire race just because they weren’t Christian. Ok, well, there were other factors, but nobody had to wear an “successful” badge. They had to wear a Judenfleck.

I am misusing the word to include the three million non-Jewish victims. Feel free to comment.

My personal interest in the Holocaust focuses on the “Aktion T 4,” the Nazi euthanasia program to eliminate “life unworthy of life”. The Nazis tuned up the Death Machine on mental patients before grinding through the other 9,000,000 victims.

Nine Million. Can you even get your brain around such a number? That is like murdering the inhabitants of SIX Philadelphia, PAs. (Philadelphia population is from the Census Bureau’s State & County QuickFacts.)

“The murder of the lunatics contains the key to the Pogrom of the Jews…”
– Max Horkheimer (1895-1973)
quoted in The Cynical Republic, “Haus des Eigensinns – House of maddening beauty”

I’ll be talking about this some more.

Technorati: suicide Nazi holocaust T+4+Aktion mental+illness Judenfleck

Tags: Bureau of the Census, Israel
Posted in American humor & satire in English, Books and reading, History & geography, Political science, Psychiatry, Psychology | No Comments »

"Muzzy Mouse" Squeaks His Last

May 11th, 2007

Ok, I went too far, propagating the “Muzzy Mouse” meme. It is ridiculous to stigmatize all Moslems based on the actions of a few WahhÄbÄ«m. We mustn’t forget that just a few years ago Catholic and Protestant Christians were murdering each other in the UK.

Personally, I think it’s time for all religions to take responsibility for policing their extremists.

Farfur the Mouse of Hamas’ al-Aqsa TV has been pulled off the air “for review.” Farfur is a Mickey Mouse clone whose job was to indoctrinate Palestinian children not with Islamic values, but with terrorist propaganda.

Video clips showed a guy in a mouse suit pretending to shoot an AK-47, while a little Mousekahideen looked on.

In a previous post I joked about Disney lawyers marching into Palestine. It appears that there is more to it, according to this article:
Israelinsider.com: “Terrorist mouse” may have squeaked its last, as Hamas kids show angers Disney

Hamas may not be much impressed by threats from Israel, and certainly not Mahmoud Abbas and his scarecrow Fatah. But angering Disney apparently strikes fear into the terror group.

It seems that Disney has come down hard on Hamas’ al-Aqsa TV.
Disney daughter calls Muslim Mickey evil

The only surviving child of Walt Disney has called Hamas “pure evil” for using Mickey Mouse to teach islamic radicalism to children. Diane Disney Miller said she was disgusted that a rip-off of her father’s iconic cartoon character was being used on a new Hamas TV show to encourage Palestinian children to take up arms against Israel and America.
[...]
“It’s not just Mickey, it’s indoctrinating children like this, teaching them to be evil,” said Ms Miller, who owns a winery in northern California.

Farfur the Mouse Mickey Mouse Mujahideen Palestine Hamas Disney AK-47 Mousekahideen al-Aqsa Farfur Fatah Farfur Wahhabi