Hitler Wearing a Jewish Beard: Soviet Yiddish Humor of World War II

• In Event: Questioning Redemptive Narratives in Artistic Productions of the Holocaust

Abstract

In the midst of World War II, Yiddish poet and journalist Hirshel Bloshteyn (1895-1978), sitting in Kazakhstan, wrote a letter to the Yiddish weekly EYNIKAYT (UNITY) in which he stated: “1943 is the year which would be remembered for the blossoming of Jewish Humor”. Bloshteyn based this assertion on his work of collecting of dozens of Yiddish jokes, humorous songs and anecdotes from Polish Jewish refugees, Soviet evacuees and wounded Red Army soldiers, who ended up in Kazakhstan in the 1940s. Indeed, these artistic products, created during the War about the war, portray a triumphant picture of Soviet victory, demise of Hitler, and merciless death of enemies. Based on analysis of Bloshteyn’s collection as well as dozens of other Yiddish jokes, all previously unknown, recorded in the Soviet Union during World War II, this paper seeks to determine the nature of Soviet Jewish humor that developed in the midst of the war among people who used jokes trying to make sense of what was happening with them and around them. The second part of the paper will look into how the Soviet government publications, such as EYNIKAYT used humor in order to lift the spirits of the readers and motivate soldiers.

Author

• Anna Shternshis, University of Toronto