Documentary asks: Can the Holocaust ever be funny?

A Jew walks into a comedy club. Is it OK for her to tell a joke about the six million who died? Can she, as Gilbert Gottfried asks, put the “Hah!” in Holocaust?

This is the topic of a fascinating new documentary by Ferne Pearlstein, who interviews Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman, Rob Reiner, Robert Clary and more to try to find out when (if ever) humour crosses a line.

Here are five things we learned:

NOT EVERYONE HAS THE SAME LINE

Abraham Foxman from the Jewish Anti-Defamation League takes TV’s Archie Bunker to task for his antiSemitic views, but Reiner (a.k.a. Meathead on All in the Family) insists that even those who identify with Bunker know he’s a bit of a buffoon. And yet Foxman adored Roberto Benigni’s 1997 Oscar-winning Life Is Beautiful, in which a concentration camp inmate makes a game out of survival for the sake of his son. But the same movie is beyond the pale for Brooks — he calls it the worst film ever made — even though his 1967 film The Producers imagined a Nazithemed musical, played for laughs.

THE LINE IS ALWAYS MOVING

Gottfried trots out the equation that comedy equals tragedy plus time. “And I always thought, why wait?” A joke about the Inquisition that could get you burned at the stake in 1481 plays as comedy 500 years later in Brooks’ History of the World: Part I.

THE BOTTOM LINE IS IT HAS TO BE FUNNY

Actor and comedian Harry Shearer says a great joke trumps all the rules. And the more serious the subject, the better the joke has to be to do that.

“You’re ashamed that you laughed at it but you’re laughing because you can’t help yourself,” he says.

Take Silverman’s off-colour joke: “What do the Jews hate most about the Holocaust? The cost!” Brooks says he was shocked when he heard that, but admits he still laughed at it.

SURVIVORS HAVE THE BEST GALLOWS HUMOUR, PRESUMABLY BECAUSE THEY WERE CLOSEST TO THE GALLOWS

The documentary spends time with Renee Firestone, an Auschwitz survivor now in her 90s who remains remarkably upbeat, and willing to laugh about things that weren’t funny at the time. She remembers a bizarre instance of being examined in the camp by Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi “Angel of Death,” who told her: “If you survive the war, you should really have those tonsils removed.”

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE JEWISH, BUT — OKAY, ACTUALLY, YOU DO

Larry Charles, who wrote for TV’s Seinfeld and directed Borat and Bruno with Sacha Baron Cohen, says it’s all about turf: Jews can make certain jokes, in the same way that only black comedians can use the Nword. (There are, as with everything in comedy, rare exceptions.) But even this can change over time. For now, if you’re not Jewish, best to stay in the audience when the subject of the Holocaust comes up. And make sure you’re laughing for the right reasons.∂∂∂½ The Last Laugh opens March 10 at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers cinema.

Mel Brooks wrote and directed 1967’s The Producers, a Nazi-themed musical played for many laughs.