In defence of bad jokes

I was once at a terrific Shabbat dinner where late in the evening one of the other guests suddenly said: ‘OK, who’s got the best Holocaust joke?’ Even people who know something about Jewish humour might be surprised by this.

I said that one Holocaust-related joke I knew was the story from the 1970s of the Monty Python crew being invited to Germany to film a television series there. The Germans had called the Pythons to say that of course they had no humour of their own in Germany and would like to import some. The Pythons agreed, arrived in Munich and were promptly taken to Dachau. In retrospect, this must have been some kind of signal from their hosts that they were accepting of their history and wanted there to be no awkwardness.

For one reason or another, by the time the cars filled with the Pythons and their colleagues pulled up to the gates, they were informed by the guard that the camp was closed for the day.