The Human Touch

MAYBE you’ve heard this one too.

Chancellor Adolf Hitler was making a speech, in that hoarse and vibrant manner of his, and turning a mere hundred thousand Nazis goofy with enthusiasm. They cheered and they yelled and they roared as only he could make Nazis cheer and yell and roar. But in one of those two-second intervals between the dying out of the of his cheerable phrases and the gathering of momentum of the cheer with which it would be received, the Chancellor became aware of a singular chuckle, a deep, throaty individual’s unorthodox and un-Nazi expression of delight in a private joke on the proceedings. He let that chuckle pass and continued, but he was sure that his ears were not deceiving him. Followed perorations and applause, and, sure enough, in between one of those ebbs and counter-ebbs, he heard that solitary, singular minority chuckle of private delight.

“Get that man!” he roared. Nazi guards were detailed through the great meeting hall and in five minutes, a little, shrunken but still smiling, Jew was hauled up before the Chancellor of the German Reich.

“Don’t you realize that you come to this meeting at the peril of your life, Jew?” The Jew admitted the peril.

“Then why, after having run such a risk, dared you to chuckle at anything I was saying?”

“To tell you the truth, Chancellor,” said the little Jew whose chutzpeh had by this time slowly returned, “I was chuckling at the thought of what a feast we’d have when you’re dead. When Pharaoh. died, did we eat! And when you’re dead, I was thinking, WILL WE EAT!”