It’s 9/11 in New York and I’m commemorating by seeing a Holocaust comedy. Though Barry Levey originally wrote Hoaxocaust! written and performed by Barry Levey with the generous assistance of the Institute for Political and International Studies, Tehran for the New York Fringe Festival, I became aware of it during its second run at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, where I saw it that fateful Ellul night ripe for introspection and self-doubt. Hoaxocaust! tells the story about the time Levey, the grandson of a survivor, was invited to his brother’s wedding to a Muslim Franco-Algerian girl in Budapest and got so fed up with hearing both his mother’s constant stream of “Jews should marry Jews because of Hitler,” and “Israel’s actions are justified because of Hitler,” and his Dominican boyfriend Anthony’s weariness at his constantly thinking about the Holocaust, that he started to really, really wish the it had just never happened. Wouldn’t that make Jewish life so much easier? Wouldn’t that make Jewish guilt and anxiety so much less severe if you could prove that the Holocaust never happened, or that it was at least way less severe than you’ve been taught?
Of course, Barry knows he’s not the first person to ask these questions. What if, maybe, possibly the deniers are onto something? He decides the only way to know is to ask them himself. Thus begins his long, strange journey down the rabbit-hole of Holocaust denial, where he’ll run into such “luminaries” as Arthur Butz, David Irving, Robert Faurisson, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Satan himself. It’s a riot of doubt, convoluted facts, and, ultimately, self-affirmation. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll leave not ready to speak to anyone until you’ve had a little while to process it.
Levey made it impossible for me not to watch this as a Jew. When he does his best to match facts with some of the world’s most infamous deniers, you have to wonder, “Would I do any better?” He readily admits he’s not an actor, but it’s that lack of conceit and simple style bring you down the rabbit-hole with him. His portrayal of everybody as a caricature also means that even once things start to get weird, it feels no less real–his mother, David Irving, and Satan are all portrayed with equal abstraction, meaning they’re all portrayed as equals. It’s one of the things that makes South Park work, and it works here, too. The play graphically portrays the downward spiral of sense that a Holocaust denier is forced into–if one is willing to believe, as Butz does, that the numbers are greatly exaggerated, it really isn’t such a stretch to believe, with Irving, that Hitler never ordered the extermination of Jews. And if you can believe that, it’s reasonable to doubt whether the gas chambers existed, a la Faurisson. And if you can believe that…
BARRY
At least admit the numbers could be totally inflated.
ANTHONY
If you’re going to say something like that, you have to prove it!
BARRY
No I don’t! I don’t have to prove anything didn’t happen.
You have to prove it did.
ANTHONY
And if you won’t accept for proof:
photographs
or eyewitnesses
or diaries
or memoirs
or speeches
or censuses
or camp records
or kill reports
or work orders
or invoices
or blueprints
or forensic analyses
or testimony
or court verdicts
or international commissions…
…what proof will you accept?
BARRY
I put great stock in the confession of Satan.
In zooming out to see the logical consequences of Holocaust denial at the end, Levey squarely nails the inherent absurdity behind Holocaust denial.
Yet one of the reasons I couldn’t really speak about the play upon leaving the theater was that I was so disturbed by how, if you don’t zoom out like he does, potentially anybody could be suckered into denial if they don’t really know the facts. Hoaxocaust! leaves its audience with many uneasy questions and no easy answers: If people aren’t taught the facts, what’s stopping them from becoming deniers? What’s at stake if denial gains prominence? Is the Holocaust too big a part of American Jewish identity or Israel advocacy? What happens when there are no survivors left? Was it intentional to do this on 9/11? What would American Jewish identity be like if it never happened? What could it be? Can the show come to campus?
Derek M. Kwait graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and is editor in chief of New Voices.
