It seems to me that Lenny Bruce’s comedy/social commentary is just as relevant today as it was nearly 50 years ago. To me he was a martyr. He wasn’t a perfect man by any means but, ultimately, he paid the price for busting through the reigns of convention and blazing a trail of his own — a trail that would be followed by the likes of Richard Pryor, George Carlin. I’ve been a Lenny Bruce fan since college and even though I’ve heard his bits numerous times, I never tire of listening. I think it’s because I always seem to come away more enlightened in one way or another. Certain bits I heard fifteen years ago carry a different meaning for me today.
Tonight I was listening and was for some odd reason stricken by Bruce’s bit on Adolph Eichmann. Bruce ended many of his shows with a reading of a poem by Thomas Merton which was about Eichmann and the apparent hypocrisy of the countries that wanted to prosecute him. Perhaps the events of the last few years regarding the U.S. and its foreign counterparts are what cause this bit to carry a particularly vivid sting these days. I don’t know. But it resonated within me, more so than it has before.
My name is Adolf Eichmann.
The Jews came every day
to vat they thought vould be
fun in the showers.
The mothers were quite ingenious.
They vould take the children
and hide them in
bundles of clothing,
Vee found the children,
scrubbed them,
put them in the chambers,
and sealed them in.
I vatched through the portholes
as they would dahven and chant
“Hey mein Liebe, heyyyy.”
Ve took off their clean Jewish love-rings,
removed their teeth and hair
for strategic defense.
I made soap out of them,
I made soap out of all of them;
and they hung me,
in full view of the prison yard.
People say,
“Adolf Eichmann should have been hung!”
Nein
Nein, if you recognize the whoredom
in all of you,
that you would have done the same,
if you dared know yourselves.
My defense?
I vas a soldier.
People laugh
Ha ha! This is no defense,
that you are a soldier.
This is trite
I vas a soldier,
a good soldier.
I saw the end of a conscientious day’s effort.
I saw all the work that I did
I, Adolf Eichmann,
vatched through the portholes.
I saw every Jew burned
und turned into soap.
Do you people think yourselves better
because you burned your enemies
at long distances
with missiles?
Without ever seeing what you’d done to them?
Hiroshima . . . Auf Wiedersehen!
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