221: Fake I.D.
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
A couple of years ago, Erin went to live in Poland, and she went with certain prejudices. She was Jewish, and she was scared of anti-Semitism. Now, many Poles will tell you that this prejudice is completely unfair, but Erin lost Polish family members in the Holocaust, and Poland was some of the most infamous concentration camps operated. Auschwitz and Birkenau and Treblinka. I mean, I had only heard one thing about Poland my entire life, from my mother, from my grandparents, that they had always hated Jews, and they had always wanted to see Jews killed, and then when the Holocaust started to happen, they were happy to see it happen, and they were collaborators, and even though my mother was saved by a pole, that was always told to me as, you know, well, she only did it for the money. So you were scared about anti-Semitism there. What did you find? I found... Well, the first thing I found is that I had a roommate with a Hebrew letter tattooed on her shoulder. I found the old Jewish quarter in Krakow, which is where I was living, has been converted into this kind of Jewish theme park. There's Jewish theme cafes that have mathebal soup and latkes, all this Jewish food, and they play it with klezmer music, and there's all these pictures of sort of Jews with black hats on the walls, and, you know, there's this huge enthusiasm for Jewish culture, and I went to a nightclub with a friend and the nightclub singer as part of a set that included all kinds of jazz songs, and, you know, when the saints go marching in, all of a sudden started playing fiddler on the roof songs. You brought tape to this. Here's a recording recorded in the nightclub. Just describe this nightclub. It's a nightclub that appeals to the up-and-coming sort of yuppy set of Krakow, 20, 30-something, really beautiful people, and really tight clothes. All the women have, you know, midriff bearing, and men are in leather pants, and Euro, hipster. Well we walked in. She was singing yesterday by the Beatles, but she does a whole sort of diverse set, but her climax, I think she kind of builds to, is this sort of montage of Jewish music. And the climax of the whole thing is half of the gila. You should say that people would never have been to a Jewish wedding. This is like the old school dance at a bar mitzvah, a dance at a wedding kind of song. And they were just crazy for it, I mean they loved it, loved it. And Krakow is how close to Auschwitz the concentration camp. It's about an hour's drive, maybe a little less than an hour. A friend of mine, an American Jew visiting me in Krakow, he'd spent the day at Auschwitz, and then I took him to this nightclub. And when the singer starts singing, first she's singing fiddler on the roof songs, and he thought that was pretty funny, because here it's a broad way to take on the old country right here in the middle of the old country. And that was sort of kitschy and funny, and then she starts singing havin' a gila, and everybody's like, "Wooo!" And they got all excited, and they jump to their feet, and they're belly dancing, and they're singing along, and my friend turned to me, and he says, "I'm sorry, where was I, eight hours ago?" It can throw you, when somebody you thought was your enemy shows up to what you thought
Transcription truncated.