WEBVTT NOTE Transcript-derived subtitle sidecar for the open-captioned MP4 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.520 … pool where they were electrocuted with electric shock, and the bodies were then 2 00:00:03.560 --> 00:00:05.760 floated towards the crematoria where they were burned. 3 00:00:05.800 --> 00:00:06.580 [Laughter] 4 00:00:06.620 --> 00:00:09.580 Or there was also the one-man gas chamber- 5 00:00:10.420 --> 00:00:12.860 This causes a lot of hilarity. I can't help it. 6 00:00:12.900 --> 00:00:16.940 It may sound tasteless, but it's in the eyewitness accounts, which nobody now quotes 7 00:00:16.980 --> 00:00:20.380 because of course they don't fit in with the streamlined Robert Mitchum, uh, war 8 00:00:20.420 --> 00:00:22.180 and remembrance version of Auschwitz. 9 00:00:22.400 --> 00:00:25.360 But there was the one-man gas chamber where you had the two German soldiers 10 00:00:25.400 --> 00:00:29.640 carrying a one-man gas chamber around the Polish countryside looking for anybody 11 00:00:29.680 --> 00:00:30.400 who had escaped. 12 00:00:30.680 --> 00:00:32.200 [Laughter] 13 00:00:32.280 --> 00:00:35.700 Now, there appear to be hundreds of thousands who've escaped, but they were looking 14 00:00:35.740 --> 00:00:39.250 for individuals at that time, and all I can say is if I'm a, 15 00:00:39.290 --> 00:00:43.180 an Auschwitz inmate who is fortunate enough to have escaped what was undoubtedly 16 00:00:43.220 --> 00:00:47.440 a very brutal slave labor camp, and I'm standing around in the countryside, and 17 00:00:47.480 --> 00:00:49.860 suddenly a one-man gas chamber turns up next to me- 18 00:00:49.920 --> 00:00:50.590 [Laughter] 19 00:00:50.630 --> 00:00:51.960 ... then I'm going to be queasy. 20 00:00:52.440 --> 00:00:54.180 I'm gonna be a bit uneasy about this. 21 00:00:54.980 --> 00:00:56.680 So how do they get me to step inside? 22 00:00:57.360 --> 00:00:57.960 [Laughter] 23 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:02.320 Well, the answer is, it's disguised as a telephone box, this one-man gas chamber. 24 00:01:03.740 --> 00:01:04.860 [Laughter] 25 00:01:04.920 --> 00:01:09.000 This is the mentality, ladies and gentlemen, this is the mentality, ladies and 26 00:01:09.040 --> 00:01:12.520 gentlemen, of the people who invent these eyewitness stories. 27 00:01:13.000 --> 00:01:14.319 It's disguised as a telephone. 28 00:01:14.359 --> 00:01:18.360 And if I'm a one, one man who's escaped from Auschwitz, and a harrowing 29 00:01:18.400 --> 00:01:21.780 experience, and I'm standing around in the Polish countryside, and suddenly 30 00:01:21.820 --> 00:01:24.560 a telephone box appears where there wasn't one a few minutes ago- 31 00:01:24.640 --> 00:01:25.630 [Laughter] 32 00:01:25.670 --> 00:01:28.640 ... and two German soldiers are standing around looking like nothing. 33 00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:30.080 [Laughter] 34 00:01:30.180 --> 00:01:32.740 Nothing is going to get me to get inside that phone box. 35 00:01:34.550 --> 00:01:37.600 The eyewitnesses say that they got you to get inside by having a phone 36 00:01:37.640 --> 00:01:38.740 inside ringing. 37 00:01:38.980 --> 00:01:41.840 [Laughter] 38 00:01:43.600 --> 00:01:44.420 Ludicrous. 39 00:01:45.600 --> 00:01:49.060 I'm reminded of the old Russian proverb, which has recently been quoted again 40 00:01:49.100 --> 00:01:52.220 by Julian Pa- Barnes in a novel called Talking It Over. 41 00:01:52.560 --> 00:01:56.140 The old Russian proverb, "He lies like an eyewitness." 42 00:02:00.140 --> 00:02:02.550 [Laughter] 43 00:02:02.610 --> 00:02:03.120 Let me, 44 00:02:05.060 --> 00:02:09.440 let me give you an example of, of, of why I think it's 45 00:02:09.480 --> 00:02:12.280 a psychiatric problem. Let me give you a, a little parable here. 46 00:02:12.500 --> 00:02:17.280 A biblical parable almost, because in Israel now, the Ministry of Justice announced 47 00:02:17.320 --> 00:02:20.380 three or four weeks ago, the British newspaper, The Independent, reported this news 48 00:02:20.420 --> 00:02:27.040 communique, that every year 200 tourists go to Jerusalem, which is of course that 49 00:02:27.780 --> 00:02:32.180 magnificent city, this crossing point of three different religions and cultures. 50 00:02:32.640 --> 00:02:36.960 And they are so overwhelmed by these crosscurrents, these, the vibes of the city 51 00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:41.580 of Jerusalem, that every year 200 tourists go there and believe that they are 52 00:02:41.620 --> 00:02:45.020 the Messiah reborn and returning to Jerusalem. 53 00:02:46.120 --> 00:02:47.839 They can't all be the Messiah. 54 00:02:48.880 --> 00:02:51.790 At most, one of them can be the Messiah, so 199 of them are 55 00:02:51.830 --> 00:02:55.920 liars. They, but they've had this immense religious experience, 56 00:02:56.600 --> 00:02:59.860 and it's rather the same kind of trauma as people who went through Auschwitz, 57 00:03:00.400 --> 00:03:04.140 or people who believe they went through Auschwitz, or people who can kid themselves 58 00:03:04.420 --> 00:03:06.140 into believing they went through Auschwitz. 59 00:03:06.720 --> 00:03:10.400 And the only way to overcome this appalling pseudo-religious atmosphere 60 00:03:10.440 --> 00:03:15.530 that surrounds the whole of this immense tragedy called World War II, is to treat 61 00:03:15.570 --> 00:03:20.899 these little legends with the ridicule and the bad taste that they deserve. 62 00:03:21.380 --> 00:03:22.800 Ridicule alone isn't enough. 63 00:03:22.840 --> 00:03:24.760 You've gotta be tasteless about it. 64 00:03:24.800 --> 00:03:28.460 You've gotta say things like, "More women died on the backseat of Sedwood Ed- 65 00:03:28.660 --> 00:03:33.020 Senator Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than died in a gas chamber at, 66 00:03:33.060 --> 00:03:33.750 at Auschwitz." 67 00:03:33.790 --> 00:03:38.540 [Laughter] 68 00:03:38.800 --> 00:03:40.020 [Applause] 69 00:03:40.560 --> 00:03:42.560 Now, you think that's tasteless. What about this? 70 00:03:44.400 --> 00:03:45.620 [Laughter] 71 00:03:46.280 --> 00:03:51.440 I'm forming an association especially dedicated to all these liars, the ones who try 72 00:03:51.480 --> 00:03:53.900 and kid people that they were in these concentration camps. 73 00:03:54.400 --> 00:03:58.460 It's called the Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust and Other Liars, 74 00:03:59.320 --> 00:04:00.840 ASSHOLES. 75 00:04:01.640 --> 00:04:03.760 [Laughter] 76 00:04:04.080 --> 00:04:05.520 Can't get more tasteless than that. 77 00:04:05.800 --> 00:04:09.000 You've gotta be tasteless because these people deserve all our contempt. 78 00:04:09.040 --> 00:04:12.200 And in fact, they deserve the contempt of the real Jewish community and 79 00:04:12.240 --> 00:04:15.100 the people, whatever their class and color, who did suffer. 80 00:04:15.780 --> 00:04:20.320 Because to my mind, the real crime in World War II wasn't genocide, 81 00:04:20.620 --> 00:04:23.650 which is this kind of fancy way for describing the killing of the Jews. 82 00:04:24.070 --> 00:04:28.100 The real crime was the killing of innocent people. 83 00:04:28.409 --> 00:04:29.739 The innocenticide, if you want. 84 00:04:29.779 --> 00:04:31.780 I'll invent a word for you, rather like the Holocaust. 85 00:04:31.820 --> 00:04:35.033 I'll give it a capital I, like my own name, innocenticide.