How Humor Helped Heal the Pain of the Holocaust

Prisoners perform at the Westerbork camp in the Netherlands. —Courtesy of Yad Vashem

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 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.

In this digital program, Ferne Pearlstein, director of The Last Laugh, and Museum Historian Edna Friedberg discuss how humor kept the human spirit alive during the Holocaust and helped survivors heal.