Chapo Trap House - Bonus: Exit Through the Gas Chamber feat. Jerry Stahl

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

In a bit of bonus content, Will interviews legendary author and screenwriter Jerry Stahl about his extremely funny and extremely dark, new book of gonzo reporting and personal memoir: Nein, Nein, Nein!: One Man’s Tale of Depression, Psychic Torment, and a Bus Tour of the Holocaust. Jerry relates his surreal experience of visiting Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau by tour bus rather than train, reviews the cafeteria and gift shop selections available at these historical sites, the friends he made along the way, and muses on moments in human history that fall in between chops of the axe. http://www.akashicbooks.com/catalog/nein-nein-nein/"

Greetings. Hello. It's Chopo. It's Will here, coming at you with a bonus episode. And joining me today is the screenwriter and author Jerry Stahl, who you might remember from such films as Permanent Midnight and Bad Boys 2. But no, he is here to discuss... Ouch. You are here today not to discuss those films, but you're here to discuss your extremely funny and extremely dark new memoir, 999, which is basically an account of the worst vacation any man has ever voluntarily taken. But Jerry, it's more than that. What is 999? And did you describe your vacation to us?

Yes, vacation in the very loose sense of the word. I was... I don't know if you can relate to this, man. I was mightily depressed, despairing for the world, myself, my psyche, everything. And I decided that when you are super depressed, what better remedy than just go somewhere where depression is absolutely appropriate and complete despair is pretty much what you should be feeling. So long story short, I was able to con the gentle folk at Vice Magazine to send me on a bus tour to do a six-part series, a bus tour of the Holocaust. So I basically rode with a bunch of strangers, many of whom who had never seen as you, for 19 days to the concentration camps at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau.

Plus, Jerry, I mean, obviously everyone wants to know, you've been to all the death camps in Central Europe. What's the best one? You went to the whole bus tour, but a lot of people may have time for that. So if you have to see one death camp, what's the experience to go for? It's really a tough call, Will. I think it depends what you're after. I mean, Buchenwald, just a hell of a snack bar. They have a real cafeteria with sit-down service. Auschwitz, not so much. It's more like your calzones, your pizza, and Dachau, sort of halfway in between. So if you're going for just the culinary treat of it all, I guess you'd have

to go with Buchenwald. Well, I mean, I want to get into the cafeteria and gift shop experiences of all of these death camps. But I mean, I think probably one of the most jaw-dropping details from the book is that at the Auschwitz cafeteria, they have pizza ovens. They do. They have little pizza ovens. So you can get a little classic, sort of Neapolitan-style pizza. It's fresh wood-burning. Yeah, it's a very good question. I didn't get that close. I was hedging my bets and

kind of standing in the doorway because there were a bunch of sort of gruff German and Polish people forging ahead of me to get their slice. But I insert irony here. I mean, what can I say with the pizza oven? Well, I mean, this whole thing has very much like a first-diss tragedy than its forest feel to it. Because if the Holocaust is the event in like the modern era that really most troubles our notion of an ordered, just or meaningful universe, then the Holocaust tourism, now that it's become, you know, like because it's the worst event that we can think of in the modern world, the tourism industry, and now that these places are sites where

you can pay to visit and go to a gift shop to, really pushes that first-diss tragedy than its forest cliche, well past even meaninglessness. And in case that you, you know, perhaps you're skeptical of this, all I can say to you, listener, is you've never been mistaken, mistook for Kramer from Seinfeld walking out of a gas chamber, which happened to you. It happened. Yeah, there are a couple rather unseemly events that happened to me upon entering Auschwitz. I was staggering out of the oven, so to speak, after my first experience. And I hear these, I think they were young Filipino women, maybe 16, 17, and there's like, I won't even attempt to do the accent justice. And I turn around and it turns out these young

ladies were under the grotesque mistaken idea that I was Kramer, that I was Michael Richard, and they wanted to get a selfie with me. So on a couple levels, this is fairly disturbing. I mean, A, what is the etiquette for a death camp selfie? And B, I'm being mistaken for Michael Richard. And C, I'm thinking how horrible it is that I'm being mistaken for Michael Richard. So like, oh my God, like a million people died here, but you're like, actually, like I'm really pissed off because these kids think I'm Kramer. I'm a little self-conscious. So what do you do? Emily Post didn't cover it. So I just plunged ahead and figured the path of least drama was to just go ahead and get the selfie

and, you know, make them happy. And whereupon I look over and see the rest of the people in my tour group looking at me like, the fuck is wrong with you? Well, I mean, like, like Holocaust selfies have become kind of a genre and they become sort of controversial because there's just like, I guess, like very like well-meaning American teenagers who go in these tour groups like you and then like, they're just still in the same mode that they are when they're in front of the Eiffel Tower. And they're showing Fuddly, they're just smiling right at our buck and fry right right under the gates. They're smiling like, I don't know. I mean, like, can you really get mad at people

for that? I mean, it seems ghoulish, but it's just, you know, I don't judge. I mean, God bless them. You know, they're there to have a good time. And, you know, I wasn't expecting it. You know, you stagger in there and you're thinking, I'm going to have an experience. I'm going to feel this depth of emotion. And the first thing you see is some mookin' and I'm with stupid t-shirt eating a fold over pizza at the snack bar. And it just looks like, then what? Where do you go with that? You know? There's another, not the, like, death camp selfies, but there has been a couple of good, one of which we talked about on the show, Holocaust Memorial selfies in Berlin.

Oh, nice. Real. I was fully with the former, he's still in the NBA. He was at the San Antonio Spurs at the time, the NBA player Danny Green. Yes. He got in trouble for this one. He had to take it down and he posted it on Facebook. It was him at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin and he gave a selfie, but the text under it was, you know, I had to do it to him one time. Hashtag Holocaust. How can you get mad at the guy? You know? But back to the genesis of the trip, you know, it's like you sort of, you midway upon your

journey through life, you found yourself in a dark forest. I did. I did. Me and Dante. This was 2016 and it was sort of a constellation of like personal existential despair and like a larger public crisis of, you know, Trump and like a, let's just say fascism becoming en vogue in America. And you sought out a kind of a psychic geography or landscape that would match your own inner depression. And that was the Holocaust bus. So much more beautifully put than I could have. Yeah, I didn't realize at the time it was going to be that way.

Mind you, I went there in 2016, so I had a million hot takes about Trump and Hitler. You know, I mean, who knew Hitler was an ass clown, too, and they thought they could just use him and make a lot of money, et cetera, et cetera. But it took me like three, four years to write the fucking book. I just couldn't wrap my mind around where upon it was like 2021 already, you know, so I had to sort of revise my thinking and look backward at Trump. And you know, instead of the mystery of where we're going to go is, oh my God, we went there. And one of the things he described like in opening the book is in a astonishing description

of an event of was it Polish nude gas chamber tag? Yes. This is some sort of Polish art installation where people were naked and playing tag in one of the gas chambers and you thought, well, hey, I got to get down on that. This looks fun. Yeah, I didn't. Sadly, because I would have gone there, I mean, with the help, you know, the kind of journalism I've done over the years, some of it is involved nudity. I did a nude singles weekend at Elysium, which was this rustic resort in Topanga, wherein, you know, your genitalia sort of gently brushed the chicken salad as you were in line for the buffet.

So I was ready. But sadly, they had discontinued the display, which was indeed an art piece because, you know, the polls, they're way ahead of us in terms of avant-garde art. And but yeah, it was nudes. And I was thinking how great it would have been had Trump himself gone naked, you know, footloose, and testicle free, you know, just flapping and fish scale white. But sadly, it was not to be a guy can dream. Yeah. So like the the organization that you contacted for putting together, this is like a package deal, right? Like, and this is a this is a common thing. It's like, we'll get you get you on a bus or in a tour group, and we'll see like all the death camps of central

Europe as a company called the global global name has been changed. Okay, protect. Okay. Yeah, you know, it turns out, well, there's this whole culture, which I didn't know about where in people who aren't rich, just regular folk, you know, school teachers, janitors, you know, a lot of bulldozer driver, you know, they want a vacation, they're not rich. So it's sort of this kind of middle class way of taking vacations. So it wasn't really about the camps so much as oh, last week, we tore the finger legs. Next week, it's Ireland. Yeah. And in between, we're going to do the camp. We're going to do DACA. And they just stay on the road. And they love it. But like, I mean, like, these package

deals are like middle middle class family, like you want to like everything sort of set out for you, you don't have to think too much or worry about it, you want to see Europe. But I mean, again, I can imagine, you know, like, we'll see the Coliseum, we'll eat at some of the best restaurants in Puscany, we'll go around. But like, just like the death camp thing, I mean, like what struck me about it is how essentially, non ghoulish or like weird, these people were they're like, Well, why are you interested in that? And like the common answer was, I saw a lot about World War Two on the history channel, right? I learned about Jews from watching, you know, the Hitler network. I saw Schindler's list. Yeah, Schindler's

list. Yeah, there was a lot of that. And interestingly enough, speaking of Schindler's list, the the tour guide told me that on that, the last tour she did, the people were more interested in going to the hotel where the stars of Schindler's list stayed than actual Schindler action. They're like, Yeah, Ben Kingsley slept here. Yeah, and isn't that a fascinating getaway. So yeah, we didn't we didn't see the hotel sadly this time around, but we did go to the Schindler Museum, which I highly recommend. I guess the only thing that struck me about it, both like your tour group, and like the when you visit the actual camps themselves where they run as museums, as I guess I was sort of surprised by how incredibly non Jewish

that everything was both the people and like the way just the fact that like everything that you ate on this tour, including in the camps itself were like pork sausage. I mean, you didn't you're because you know, you're a vegetarian like Hitler. Yeah. Yeah, me and Hitler, you know, vegetarian, I don't keep his injectable regimen. I mean, I think you know, on a daily basis, he showed cocaine, morphine, heroin, amphetamine and Bulgarian peasant stool, which really gave me that. Okay, that was that was a detail that I did not know. I knew about a pretty just a drug regimen. But like his doctors were injecting him with the fecal matter of Bulgarian peasants. As one does. Yeah, sure. Because they have

an incredible amount of vigor. And his doctor, Dr. Morrell, thought this was just that extra little soup son of something that he needed to sort of kick the other stuff. Yeah, keep him up in the bunker down or up or just to give him a kind of I think I just didn't vigor earthy vigor is just ensure a smooth ride, you know, and it varied from day to day. But look, I take no credit for discovering this. There's this amazing book and documentary called Blitz. Oh, that's a great book, which I hardly recommend where I got all my Bulgarian peasant fecal matter info. I feel like like, like, like you made some friends with the people in your group. Like this was made some pals. Yeah, there was one Jewish guy, though.

There was a Jewish guy and he was actually like put in a displaced displaced persons camp after World War II as a kid. So he's actually sort of like kind of experienced just a little bit of this. Yes, he was coming back to Poland for the first time. We'll call him Shlomo. He was a very Trump loving Republican Jew. Because as he said, the Bible predicted Trump was King Cyrus, the British King. And even though he was a bit of a rascal, like Trump, he was good for the Jews. So we became pals. I mean, what am I going to do? Yeah, arm wrestle the guy, you know, you're not going to persuade somebody. Aside from the like the essential like non Jewish nature of like the entire experience. Yeah. Because you think like just

the fact that you can eat pork sausages in camps themselves, like that's basically what's pepperoni pizza, ham sandwiches, all of it. It was neither kosher nor halal. No end of the nutritional spectrum. Did they seem to care? I guess just like, I mean, so much of the humor of the book, but also kind of the grotesquery is just like how indistinguishable these, you know, which are really kind of should be like sacred, you know, almost like just like profoundly like almost unspeakable places. I feel even coughing in there would be some sort of profound, just like just just offense to history. But just the astonishing rubory and just like yokel them of all it's like Disney World. Like it's insane. Like

people wearing t shirts. It's like, you know, just all have beer, please or just like backwards hats and just like, sure, I'm not the most like, you know, prudish or like, you know, for standards or course behavior. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, like, were you expecting that or like, I first of all, I didn't know what to expect. The last thing I expected, as I say, was that. And also, there's the unavoidable reality that being a human being or a human of a certain age, you know, I wanted to have this experience. But the first thing I did when I got to the camp, like shot out of a fucking cannon was get to the men's room whereupon I met a really interesting character who is the Dachau crap. I mean, the well,

in this case, the actual Auschwitz Krabber hand, who apparently this was he was a third fourth generation bathroom attended. And you just have to say to yourself, well, this guy wouldn't have a job if it weren't for the Holocaust. And I didn't know whether you paid your zloty, which is the Burt Young of currency, just this worthless and kind of crumply, ugly money. If you paid on the way, I paid twice because I'm kind of a Kandy ass. And then I was P shy, because I was intimidated by the ghost of my dead, you know, family. And so that's how that went for I thought you should suffer. You should be uncomfortable. Yeah. But like, you know, a lot of it is you have like, sort of community with with your

family history, you know, like being like, you know, Jew born in America. Sure. And then like you go to Poland. And there's a line you write in the book where you're like, as an American Jew in Poland, paranoia doesn't feel like paranoia. It feels like gravity. And like, could you describe like Poland's very weird relationship with Jews? Because it's sort of like, I don't know, I discovered it's almost like the Cleveland Indians baseball team. Like they've obviously done a lot of pogroms and mass massacres to Jewish people. Very much so. But they sort of like them. It's just sort of like they become sort of a cute mascot for the Polish people. Speaking of mascots, exactly. There are what they call

little Jews, which are little wooden Jews, which are basically like rabbinical looking bearded, Jewy old dudes with a coin that they're holding. And they're considered good luck. And they say a Jew in the home means money is coming. And it's sort of like, like a lawn jockey. But but for Jews. And they're actually fun fact, there's now more wooden Jews than actual Jews in Poland. And the other odd fact about Poland, if anyone so much as implies that the polls had anything to do with participation in the Holocaust, you're going to jail. Yeah. And not just Jew jail, you're going to jail. Yeah. And so that that's their relationship. But on a personal level, I mean, I like, you know, the little Jew trinkets, I wish I could

have brought you one. Yeah, I would love a coin in my pocket. You know, they're great stockings. Let's not get ourselves. Um, but you know, like they're not like, um, dare Sturmer cartoon depictions. Well, it's a little bit borderline. Sort of skirts the boundary a little bit. Yeah. Well, they're, you know, they're classily done. I'm not gonna lie. You know, they're about six inches and hand car from Lyndon tree, which is very popular in Poland. And you know, but the thing for me, you mentioned the paranoia is like gravity. When you're like in a, uh, say a hotel coffee shop in the morning and some old fuck is over there like sausage gobbling, just giving you complete stink guy. You know, it's some 95

year old bastard. And you're just thinking there is no way that like 60 years ago, this guy wasn't tossing Jew babies up in the air and bayonetting them for fun, you know, and the way he's looking at you, it's like, I know what he's thinking. Yeah, yeah. He's thinking I could have had you a man, but I can't prove it. But that was my just nonstop sense of dread and paranoia. And well, you got into some Polish neo-Nazis and a McDonald's and your friend, your friend, the elderly Jewish gentleman. Well, he knew what to do. I mean, he's stepped up. Yeah. He knew some insults were like, you know, some of the Polish equivalent of like soggy piss cake. You know, I can't even begin to translate. But yeah,

they stepped up. I was taking a picture at a McDonald's of these guys and the green eagle outfit, which I thought was some soccer team turns about this neo-Nazi fascist. Well, you're up. It's like soccer team slash neo-Nazi group is sort of a Venn diagram. I know, you don't even need to slash. I mean, what's there's no difference. They bleed into one another. So he resented the fact that I was taking pictures of him. And I tried to explain like a complete candy ass basically that no, this is my job. I go around taking pictures of McDonald's and you shouldn't be pissed at me. This is my job. He didn't buy it. And he tried to back me down and he did one of those chest bumps and the other guys called me Eudon,

which is a first. Never been called Eudon before. And Shlomo stepped up and said something I can only guess was completely withering in Polish. And they backed off and he kind of this little this little bald guy in mon jeans, like, you know, just about like an inch over the navel. Yeah. Great, you know, with the crease, the whole thing. He saved my bacon. That's really the other astonishing part of the book when you visit Auschwitz, I cannot believe this. Like, so you're in the gas chamber, which is like, you know, like describe that feeling. Like, I mean, I've never experienced it. But like, just imagine it like, what is it like to like, when you walk in there, there is the silence of a million

deaths, you know, you just hear the absence of sound. And it's for me, it was as close I'm going to say a holy moment, but I think I felt something or would have. Well, it's a bit you encountered a Holocaust hipster. Yes, in in the gas chamber. And it's just some fucking loud mouth, who immediately just starts spouting off about how this isn't authentic. And now when I was really reading this, I was totally shit. It's just like a Holocaust denier who goes on Holocaust tours and like points out the inaccurate. Oh, well, actually, like, you know, they killed a million people in these ovens or whatever. But no, this guy was like, a Holocaust purist. He wanted everyone to know this wasn't the real

deal. This wasn't the original like retrofitted or remade in some kind of remade because it was crumbling. And so for him, it was not real. And what can I say, there were scratches on the wall, which I just found chilling to my core. But he's like, nah, they made those. Right. They just did that. So like idiots like you would buy the experience, you know, like, well, then why is he on the tour? Exactly. He knows this. He knows it's inauthentic. He's basically harshing my Holocaust melon right there. Yeah. And I wasn't appreciative of that. But and he was bickering with his girlfriend. It was like, would you just shut up? So they were having, you know, I don't know if they were newly wedged, but they

were bickering like they were together. They were stuck together. And she wasn't really into his denialism. Now, I mean, like, did you encounter like writing the book or researching it or even just, you know, in your personal life, some of the more standard, like Holocaust denial tropes? And actually, now that I can ask you, you have been to all these desk camps. Did the Holocaust happen? I'm going to go out in the living. I think it absolutely happened. And I think the miracles I say towards the end of the book is it's always happening somewhere, somewhere in the world, the axe is always falling. So you might as well be grateful. My message of hope, you know, that's me, is that it's not falling on you right

now. Just like, like Holocaust denial, denialism is such a like an interesting thing. Because I mean, like, okay, you were now such if you're the classic about the swimming pool at Auschwitz. Yes. Okay. So yeah, yeah, there is a swimming pool at Auschwitz, but they weren't letting, you know, prisoners just take a dip or whatever. I mean, it's a huge facility. I mean, there's like, like people had their kids there, you know, like, I mean, I'm telling them there were kids there, but I'm talking about like the commandants of the camp and stuff. Yeah, it was like a lovely neighborhood. Right over the wall was commandant Huss, H-O, Umlat SS had his family there. And it was lovely. And even if you go into

the town, I'm not even going to attempt, it's like Oz Weekum, I can't pronounce it. It's just like, it's a fucking gingerbread film. You know, it's so quaint and lovely. And apparently back in the day when this was all happening, they didn't really know what was going on. They just knew there was this kind of dingy quality to the white sheets that they would hang out to dry, you know, from the, uh, the Jew flakes that were raining down. Um, but like, you know, like when you encounter like, uh, like people who are strident that like the, the Holocaust didn't happen or it did happen, but it wasn't six million Jews who died in it. It's just like, it's this perfect kind of, um, like paradox. Cause like, I

think the standard thing is like, uh, the Holocaust didn't happen or it didn't happen in the way history teaches us. But if it did, that would be good. And in fact, preferable to it not happening. Yeah. So like, you know, so why deny it? You know, it becomes a numbers game for these people. You'd be proud of it. You know, I know. That's a very, very good point. And, uh, Commandant Hess on that tip complains how hard it was to keep up the numbers that the, uh, those in command, you know, his quota, his quota, you know, and he, he was rushing them through, but you know, it takes a certain amount of time. You can't just burn them.

Well, I mean, like you said in the book, it's one of like the many like very, very gruesome and chilling details in the book is him complaining. Like, well, I mean, we can gas them by the thousands. That's easy, but like cremating the bodies. That's the hard part. You know, you have to work. Uh, you, you quote from the diaries or first person sources of the, the, what are they called? The, the son or commandos, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Sotter commandos. Those are the Jews who were like tasked with, with, with, with running the ovens. Yeah. And they would just get bodies after like thousands of bodies every day in and out working 12 hour shifts day and night around the clock to keep it going. And you

know, this has been a trope of Holocaust denialism too. The idea that like, oh, like, well, the size of the ovens is like, oh, they couldn't burn them bodies in that many times. And then like very easily dispatched by the guy just saying, Oh, well, we were working 24 hours a day. There were two shifts. Yeah. So like, maybe if they were only working like, you know, a nice eight hour day, you know, clock in, clock out, the numbers wouldn't add up. But yeah, clearly they had specialists in to figure this out. And what happened at Dachau towards the end is they ran out of fuel. So they would just throw the bodies on the fucking ground, which is why when the troops came in to liberate them, uh, they were just so

horrified and traumatized because these bodies were just, you know, we see these pictures. But if you can imagine the stench and the reality of just these endless piles of bodies, I mean, it's hard not to sympathize. So then like, okay, so you're, you're communing with this like unspeakable, unspeakable horror, like the, just like the limits of what human beings are capable of doing, capable of enduring and doing to each other. But all of this exists side by side with this, like the same touristy kitsch that you encounter everywhere else in Europe as a tourist. So like, like, what are some examples of some stuff that in like the gift shop of one of the, like a book and wall or Auschwitz?

Well, I'm not going to say they had the, you know, I went to Auschwitz and I went out with this stupid t-shirt. I looked, you know, but what was interesting, for example, um, not this might not qualify as kitsch, but like the books they chose to have. Okay. The, but the book section was really funny. So like, yeah, they have the obvious books on the Holocaust, right? They had the books on the Holocaust, standards. Yeah, you're Schindler. Uh, yeah, you're Victor Frankel. Yeah. You know, Primo Levy. I need Primo Levy there.

Primo? Sure. You know, Primo Levy, like Tadius Browski, whose name I can never pronounce, is a great writer, just a side note who survived the Holocaust and subsequently hurled himself down the steps and touring and killed himself, just like Borowski killed himself, which is an understatement. Yeah. And that was in the 80s. That was like 1981, I think. Yeah. These people made it out and then couldn't deal or whatever we, or as he said, the best people were not the people who survived, which forgive me, that's a side note. Yeah. No, but I mean, one of the, it's one of the statistics you say about Auschwitz is

like, I think out of like the 1.5 million people who were killed there, 60,000 survived it. Yeah. Primo Levy being one of them, you know, only to, you know, kill himself. And I mean, like, I'm kind of haunted by like a lifelong depression as well, you know? Yeah. So like back, back, back to the books in the gift shop, though. Yeah. Back to the books. It's almost like the books they had were Philip Roth, Woody Allen, Okay.

and Sigmund Freud. Yeah. He was sensing a theme here. So like, not, not, not any of Woody's, you know, Holocaust related literature. Well, it's hard to say, you know, I didn't leave through. I don't, I don't know if it was without feathers. I don't remember the exact one. But, you know, it is interesting. It's almost like they thought, you know, these Jews, they're, they're kind of yuck hocksters. You know, there's some real chuckleheads, there's some laughs. They were funny. Who knew? So they, you know, they had some of those kind of books, you know.

And I got to bring it up because it was another one of the, the funniest parts of the book. But you're sort of, you know, like the day before you go to Auschwitz, you, you sort of, you seek, you seek an encounter, an online encounter with, with a sort of European kink site. Wow. And it was just, well, first of all, like, how would you describe the kinks of Europe and also as a side question, why was shit eating so popular among the leaders of the Third Reich?

The eternal question. It is the eternal question. And what did that do to A? It was a breath, you know, but yeah, there was a site, something on the order. I think it's like, uh, alterna.com, something like that. And what it is, it's not even just European. It's all over the world. And they divide the patrons, customers, enthusiasts, ecstatics into groups of, uh, you know, there's the humiliation seekers, there's the humiliation givers, the smack and the smacky, and, uh, there's the pony play and there's the, the coprophagia, which is ever popular. And I thought it would be interesting to go around from district to district and find out like, yeah, I wonder if the, uh, the locals near Auschwitz were

more pony players or more shit munchers, you know, uh, sadly in Poland, they did not break them into groups as if they knew someone might come looking. But it is an interesting question because according to all accounts, Hitler, you know, Hitler liked to stool and, and evil ever liked to comply was like pre Danny Thomas. This is like pre plate job minus the plate. There was no plate. But, uh, was it, you, you, you encountered someone who was into a certain kind of a verbal abuse? Well, uh, yeah, you know, I didn't realize that just by being on there, I think I was

like, uh, what was I was like, uh, mean daddy 50 or something like that. Uh, and, and somebody that the night before I'm in this hotel and in Poland and it's like somebody DMs me. I think she was like special needs or something like that, uh, special care, something, you know, ominous. And she wanted, uh, she wanted me to like spank her dirty vagina. But she, she used the, um, uh, she coined the term that I've never revered, but jujaina jujaina. She wanted to slap you wanted you to slap her dirty jujaina, slap her dirty, her dirty jujaina. And I'm like, all right, you know, who am I to deny? I'm like, okay, slap, slap,

slap. I'm hitting your dirty. It's all over text. I'm sitting, God, I can't sleep. And this is weird, you know, always say yes. So, uh, I went along and it was like slap. And then I, you know, I think I, I, I said something like, uh, I'm going to hurt your filthy Jew hole. And, uh, she's like, that's disgusting. You know, so she preferred, you know, the kink thing is like, if you don't want to develop too specific of a kink, you know,

Listen, I was out of my depth, you know, and if anyone's offended by this, apologies, I was just trying to play by the rules of the game. Um, I mean, like, so, so much of the book is, is defined by this, this real, like, you know, gallows humor. And this is the biggest gallows on the planet. It is the biggest gallows, but you know, it's very important because it was kind of a kind of a tight rope. But the humor was all about the sort of extra stuff. Obviously, it's not about the camps, but it's about the snack bar and the people going and the, you know, there were skinheads at that guy, which was very weird, who were like clomping around

and their monstrous fucking hobnail boots, short black pants and snug T shirts. Uh, you know, and for them, it was a, it was a fun outing. And the people, nobody judged, you know, nobody threw them out. Uh, so who's to say, I think you bring to the Holocaust what you bring to the Holocaust? And well, like, what did you feel you brought to the Holocaust? Because I mean, you know, like loading back onto that tour bus is like everyone else is just like they've just seen like a Roman baths or something. And they're like, okay, on to the next site. But like, I mean, does it, does it drain you?

That's a pretty good question. Well, I, you know, I bring, but I pretty much bring anywhere. I mean, you know, I like the self loathing, the regret, the like, what the fuck am I doing? How did I end up here? But what occurred to me, what I was very curious about, I don't know if you ever thought this was like, how soon did the people who were at this site able to shed? Like when did they sort of transition from worrying about this every day, the minutiae of their, of their horror and their dread and their ambition and their love life and money to like, just trying to survive. And, you know, for me, in the second part of the book, you know, I had a, there's a, there's a side story, which is I had sold this book, OG dad that I'd written,

and ABC bought it. They didn't ever read the book was about the, you know, the hijinks that ensue in an older father. You know, I have a kid and I married somebody younger, but they never read the book. And it was very dark. So they heard me on Marron because why read the book when you can podcast. Right. So long story short, they hated everything about it. And I was trying to give them a treatment, which for the 10 people not in show business in the audience, which is a description of what you're going to write when you write before they tell you not to write it, because it's not what they want you to write. So long story short, I'm getting phone messages, and I make the mistake as I'm just sort of slogging my way out of God. So yeah, I think it was at

DACA where they actually have, they would hang you in front of the oven, just a torture. So they would hang you so you could watch as you're being hung what was going to happen to your body. So this happens. And then I'm walking out and I got a, I get a call and I make the mistake of like listening to the message. And it's like this, I just call them a sensitive exec. I won't name his name from ABC and it was like, can you make Jerry less creepy? So I'm getting this text, which I, this is worse than like getting a call from your mom if you're on acid and picking up the phone, you know, but on a par because not unlike that situation, it's like, why the fuck did I answer the phone? But I did because there's a party of things. Maybe this is the call that

will change everything. And it was just a horror show and I hated myself all over the place. You know, and I couldn't help but think, you know, if I were in an office, I would have that experience which is they don't just reject you. They spray the couch cushions with my soul. They open up the windows, get the stink out. But you know, I had that moment where I of course I was thinking about Jerry Lewis. Yeah, the day the clown cried. Sure. Yeah. You know, but have you seen that movie, by the way? No, I went to a reading of it Largo, which was fantastic. I've never seen it. I mean, it's like embargoed. It's, you know, it's never be seen. Kennedy papers are released before that. A great thing about Jerry Lewis, which is why I love him, needless to say, is that he would do

this thing every time he had a meeting, he would bring an atta shake case. And then he would leave it there. And what it was, it was secretly a tape recorder. Oh, wow. So he would forget his tape recorder. And then he would get the real dope. And then he would hear what they thought about. Yeah. And I was thinking of like, nah, that is the last thing I would want. I mean, I'm hearing the message and I want to fucking, you know, take my brain out and throw it in the, you know, spray with raid. Like the Holocaust, that's just like a, like it is a huge part of like America's self mythos is like a lot of people think like, oh, like we entered World War two to end the Holocaust. So not true. Yeah. So not. But like most Americans didn't even really

know what the final solution or the Holocaust or what the death camps were until like the 70s, until it became part of like the public school curriculum. But like, how do you see like, how do you think present day Americans view the Holocaust versus like present day Europeans? Interesting question. I'll just tell you, for me, I thought I was going to visit the past. And I came back with a sense that I was visiting the future because not to put too fine a point on it or be too dramatic. I think it's just a matter of time before you look out your window and say, gee, why are they taking Bob? You know, why are they taking my neighbor? Just, you know, I think we'll start with the special hats. You know, we'll start with the equivalent of the

yellow star and we'll have jackets. And it's going to happen. I think for an American, as well as for a lot of Europeans, I think they feel that this is in the mail. Absolutely, it's going to happen again, maybe not in the exact same form, because we can streamline, you know, our industry has developed since then. But we can microwave now. But like the Europeans, like they're not like being made to feel guilty over the Holocaust, about like, you know, or sort of letting it happen or participating in it happening, like they have sort of a chip on their shoulder that whereas Americans have the opposite where they think like, oh, we're the only thing stopping a billion Holocausts from happening and we stopped

the original one from happening. Sure. We loved talking about the Holocaust. Sure. Well, it's like Voltaire said, self delusion is the key to happiness. And that is the American delusion. In Europe, interestingly enough, everybody feels like the victim, the French who like caved in five minutes and like instantly sent off every Jew in Paris, they felt like victims. The Poles felt like the Germans came in and overtook them. But in reality, of course, they collaborated because why wouldn't they? Money to be made. I mean, there was the, you know, uprisings, there was a Polish resistance. I mean, there was a French resistance to you cannot deny the bravery of the resistance fighters. Absolutely. But the very fact that it was an underground resistance

tells you that in the main, the government, whether it was Vichy or the Poles were going along. And of course, no one in German knew it was happening. Nobody knew it was happening. And I guess like another part about like the Holocaust being such a big part of America's self mythology is due to like the entertainment industry. So I mean, like, do you have feelings like how does Hollywood and like movies like like how, how was the Holocaust important to Hollywood and like just sort of the American like myth making factory? Well, I think it's important on a lot of levels. I mean, on the specific, and some might say petty, there's the fact that Hugo Boss designed the SS uniforms. Right. So every rich Hollywood young

man getting bar mitzvahed is wearing his Hugo Boss bar mitzvah suit, you know, designed, of course, by Hugo Boss. So there's that on another level. I think the message in Schindler and why so many people like I love the guy who wrote the movie and I know when he's great. But the fact is that Liam Neeson had to come in there this big, barely hunk of a Christian and save the Jews. Once again, because the Jews had no agency. We're just little squirrely people who need saved by big hunky Christians. I mean, it could be apocryphal. But I mean, I remember reading that Stanley Kubrick apparently spent his like a good chunk of his career of like agonizing over how to do a movie on the Holocaust. And he concluded that he couldn't. Yeah, it was impossible. And he said

of Schindler's List, he said Schindler's List is not a movie about the Holocaust. Schindler's List is about 800 people who lived. The Holocaust is about two millions who died. What a great quote. Yeah, I did not know that. I mean, like I said, one more reason. Yeah, no, it makes master. Yeah, it sounds like the kind of thing he would say, of course. I mean, you know, he was a guy who knew how to take humor from the complete tragedy of tragedy of existence. And I mean, like, that's really what you're doing with this book. So I mean, like, when you came to the end of the tour, like, I mean, the book ends with your yes, very, very optimistic, you know, prescription that, you know, like it just if in between chops of the axe is like, you know,

the axe is coming, but like living in between. Well, it's optimum, you know, it has been called optimistic to me at the time, it was the bleakest fucking thing you could say, which is, we're all going to be pushed into the oven soon enough. But since it's not happening now, you know, enjoy the fresh air, you know, did did going on the worst vacation ever and like communing psychically with like the bleakest, darkest parts of humanity. Did that help with your with your own depression or sense of self? On a certain level, it can't help but put little spring in your step when you realize, well, this isn't happening to me yet. So it ended up being a positive. I mean, I don't know that I'm going to start a psycho analytic movement wherein we ship the presos

to the camps so that they can learn to be jolly. But hey, it worked for me. Yeah, okay. And you said you like you, you were you took you a lot of the way up. But like, you know, in 2016, it was you had you had a, you know, an unsure feeling about where this might be going with Trump. But then by 2021, you have we knew you saw what happened. So like, like, how do you regard like Trump and the kind of like nation nascent like American nationalist movement that is, you know, sort of a fascism has a sort of a little little was it notes of fascism? Or is this just outright fascism to you? Oh, I think we've entered into outright. But you know, Trump's like the dumb Hitler. You know, Hitler had, like him or not, you know, he had a couple of

good ideas until the peasant stool and morphine kind of dragged him down. But you know, Trump is, you know, he's, he's a manipulator. He knows how to survive. He's the perpetual cornered rat. And there's nobody smarter in the short term. In the long term, I think he's just trying to survive another day. What about you? I mean, it's like, it's certainly the problem is like, one thing about this is that like, you know, fascism, like as it existed in Europe in like the 1930s and 40s, like requires a mass, it's a mass politics, like a mass politics and the engagement of like millions of like politicized people. Yes. Yes. It's hard for me to imagine that being repeated either from the right or the left in America, because like our, you know, culture and like politics is so

deeply, it's hard for me to imagine a mass movement for good or bad arising out of contemporary America. But it is unmistakable that like, you know, the, the, the, the notes of shall we say, like, you know, violent right wing politics of a certain flavor that got popular in Europe is there are people who consciously or unconsciously, I think they like, they get a certain thrill out of toying with that or toying with the imagery or the aesthetics of like classic European fascism, like where it's going to lead, it's hard to know. But like, I mean, it's, I think it's very clear that like, you know, like vulnerable minority groups, like, like, you know, people who feel weak, I think very clearly like want to make themselves feel powerful by this kind of like fantasy or

even reality of rounding people up or just, just punishing or like, you know, emissorating or then eventually like pushing to like down this like ladder, this staircase that ends with the ovens. And so for someone or some group of people, I don't know. I think that's very well put. And, you know, now we're seeing, as this was being taped, our, our very own like night of the long knives where the, where in the super right wing want to fucking take out the FBI, right? You know, and who would have thunk it? You know, the Republicans who were, you know, back in the blue. So I do believe. Well, they back the blue, but like federal law enforcement has long been, I mean,

I don't think that's the property there because like, you know, like, you know, Ruby Ridge, like federal law enforcement has always been kind of seen among the far right as like fundamentally illegitimate, like the Posse Comitatus, like the only, the only like the highest level authorities, like local sheriffs or anything above that is unconstitutional. So true. But they did kind of dip into beating up the blue on January 6th. That's true. Yeah. Not to, you know, not to get petty. So I think both things can be true. And I,

if I understand what you're saying, it's almost like we're just too fucking lazy for a mass movie. Yeah, I think so. Which I think there's a certain truth to that. But I do believe as Trump sees his power slipping, the last thing he has are the MAGA freaks. Well, they're already doing suicide attacks on the FBI offices and stuff. Yeah, they've gone full Yukio Mishima, except they're not doing sepaku like on the steps of the Pentagon. They're just hurling themselves like FBI officers. But I think you're going to see more and more on that. And I also think you, you know, more

and more Jews are going to be attacked. I mean, I don't know. I'm always kind of paranoid because I grew up like the only Jewish kid in a school of 800. And you grew up in Pittsburgh. I grew, not the Bragg, but the particular school I went to, I was the only Jew. And, you know, I was always accused of killing Jesus, which I, you know, clearly must have done in a blackout when I was like five, because I had no fucking memory. And, you know, that stays with you. So I just want to like, we mentioned it before, I just want to read like sort of from the end of the book, you say, you read at the end, you're sort of concluding remarks, call it the redemption of

the living by the dead. That is the gift. That is the horror that in the end is the only reality that matters. My message of hope and obligatory, if questionably redemptive anti-depression, is that the Holocaust was not an exception. It is the time in between Holocaust that it is the exception. So, savor these moments, be grateful, even if the axe is always falling. Call me a cock-eyed optimist. I mean, oddly enough, in reviews and such, people have called that hopeful. I think it's bleak as fuck, because what you're saying is, no matter what, the axe is falling. So, hey, you know, make hay. Have, has anyone, have you gotten any pushback or any criticism about the idea that you're sort of

like profaning the Holocaust or that you're making too light of it or like this, the humor and absurdity of it? It sort of does a disservice? Because, I mean, like, I mean, there are many descriptions of the books that are, that are quite horrific of like actual facts of like, you know, how the Holocaust was carried out or like Dr. Mengele's experiments and stuff like that. Like, but have you gotten any like from the Jewish community or otherwise about being insensitive or sort of too insouciant with how you deal with the material? Again, a great question. I did another book called Pain Killers, which with the genius Larry Charles, we tried to do it as a kind of a buddy thing, where one of the buddies with Joseph Mengele. So, we anticipated some pushback on that. Never

happened, sadly. With this book, I think the heart of it is that it's not anything about the Holocaust, which is nothing but tragic and terrifying and pretentious. It's really about the trappings, you know. It's not the turkey, it's the garnish, which I believe is a saying in Pennsylvania Dutch country, though it might be ham. So, I don't know, you know, I haven't gotten any pushback and weirdly enough, most of the people who have reviewed it have been Jewish magazines or Jewish newspapers, and I've never been covered by these people in my life. And somehow, and, you know, even appeared in the Jerusalem Post, not to brag. And somehow... Any fascist newspapers or magazines have I reviewed this yet? You know, I'm waiting. I haven't gone on Gab. I don't know

if it's been reviewed on there. But, you know, or what is the truth social? Truth social, yeah. Truth social. I'll check my account, you know, see if I got any dings. But, you know, so far, I think people have understood what the book is about. And of course, it was a risky venture, but it seemed... Some books, you just have to write, and this was one of them. I guess, like, you know, as he said, you grew up as like the only Jewish kid in your school in Pittsburgh. And it's just like, I don't know, like, you know, you have a family history of, like, you know, fleeing pogroms, you know, like my father's parents and my father's father, like, his family, they all fled Russia to avoid conscription in the Tsarist army.

Same with my grandfather. He fled conscription in the Tsarist army. Very same history. This sense of, like, you know, there's always this kind of sense of paranoia, like I guess, right? Does that make you half a Jew? Yeah, technically. You know, it seems to me one corner of a Jew, but on the wrong side, because it was his dad's side. That'd kill you anyway, man. Yeah. Well, actually, one time, I grew up in the Upper West Side. I'm sorry I outed you. Yeah. I grew up in the Upper West Side, and one time, I was walking down the street with my dad, who, you know, is a, so we say, like, is a half Jewish himself, but is very visibly Jewish. And we were approached by the...

Nicely put. The Mitzvah Mobile, you know, like, the people they wanted, they tried to approach Jews and get them to be more Jewish, and they approached you on the street and they go, excuse me, sir, like, you mind my asking, are you Jewish? And there's one of the most proud moments of my life in my dad, where he goes, oh, like, you know, a little bit, I'm half Jewish. And the guy goes, oh, well, you know, I'm on my asking, what side? And he goes, I'm on Jewish on my dad's side. And he goes, oh, I'm sorry, but, you know, we're only interested. And if your mother was Jewish, my dad just, I'm missing a beat, just looks at him and goes, buddy, if it was good enough for Hitler, it should be good enough for you. But yeah, I mean, I guess, like, just

in terms of like, that's good, the relationship's like, like the Jewish American life and this like idea of the Holocaust is like this idea that it's always out there. And it's always defining you in some way or it's always like worried that it might happen. But like, in terms of like, an American Jewish sense of self, like for you personally, like how much is the kind of the gallows humor of it is really like the meaning of it, like when confronted with the most unimaginable thing possible. What else do we really have but to laugh? Of course. And, you know, well known fact, I'm not coming up with this oppressed people are generally the funniest people. And there is also the fact which my grandfather, the one who avoided conscription

in the czar's army would always say, if you ever forget you're a Jew, a Gentile will remind you, which I think has never been more apt now because people aren't afraid. Thanks to Trump and company, people aren't afraid to express the shit's always been there, but they're not afraid now to just show it. And like, I mean, is it a way of like, I don't want to say like, oh, like, you know, comedy or writing is going to save the world, but is a way to like sort of undermine the evil of this or just to notice it or at least just diffuse its own hold over one's own psyche? You know, you're an artist yourself. So you know that when you write or paint or whatever, you don't always know what the fuck you're doing

when you're doing it. So I think the answer to that is yes, absolutely, but not consciously. Right. You know, I think I was diffusing it. And also, you know, because there's nothing funnier than these assholes, but there's also nothing scarier. Yeah. You know, and I think it's kind of a mobius stripper. You're always flipping from one to the other simultaneously. Well, I think as James Joy said, history is a nightmare that we are all trying to stop laughing about. Something like that. Jerry Stahl, I want to thank you so much for joining us. The book is 999. It is incredibly funny. And like I said, incredibly dark, but you know, if you're a fan of Jerry Stahl, you'll know what to expect. But if you're not, this

is the chance to get on board. Get on board now, the Jerry Stahl train. Thanks, man. I'm a huge fan. It's an honor to be here. Oh, oh, by the way, one last thing. Did you attempt to play Pokemon Go in Auschwitz? Or did they shut that down? You're throwing me a softball here, but they did have a sign, no Pokemon. So did any Pokemon die in the Holocaust? That's an important question. Apparently, two did. But they're keeping it under wraps. Yeah, it was a squirtle. I'm not a liberty to say. It was a Charizard. Okay. Yeah. All right, Jerry Stahl, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks, man.