Humor w okupowanym Krakowie

Abstract

HUMOUR IN THE NAZI-OCCUPIED KRAKOW

The article is an attempt to answer the question how the Nazi German occupation influenced the sense of humour of Kraków residents, and whether it left any room for fun and laughter. The research has revealed that humour was in fact always present in the everyday battles against the hardships of occupation reality in Kraków. The paper presents a survey of the various kinds of jokes popular in that period, the authors who created them, and the social functions they performed. Political wit played a particularly important role. Current affairs provided ample inspiration for the jokes, and Nazi German dignitaries became the popular targets of mockery, Adolf Hitler being the character most frequently featuring in such jokes. The jokes were created spontaneously, and their authors usually remained anonymous. Street musicians and newsboys became invaluable originators and distributors of jokes. The social need for humour was also recognized by the underground activists. Jokes often featured in the underground press, and some of the publications that appeared in Kraków at that time had a strictly satirical profile. Political humour circulated via leaflets, posters, stickers, slogans written on the walls, etc. Some of the actions organized by the underground movement in order to uplift the dispirited people of Kraków at the most difficult times during the war also had humorous overtones. As the occupation authorities were held up to ridicule, they did not seem dangerous any more, but, rather, ludicrous and stupid, which made the problems one normally encountered during Nazi occupation easier to confront. However, the Nazi-occupied Kraków was not monopolized by political jokes alone. Jokes about people’s manners and social habits, especially concerning the relationships between men and women, were very common too. The ability to tell funny jokes still defined a person’s social attractiveness, just as it did before the war. The occupying authorities also used humour and satire to attain their own objectives. Derisive political wit constituted a part of propagandist campaigns, especially anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic. Nonpolitical humour was to deflect attention from the ongoing problems. Humour was also an integral element of officially published periodicals where separate, regular columns were dedicated to jokes, comic stories, satirical drawings and epigrams.