Song and dance at Auschwitz

So, does anybody have a right to sing and dance at Auschwitz?

A viral doing the rounds at the moment, or at least until YouTube pulled it, pictures an 89 year old holocaust survivor doing the conga with his relations (grandchildren?) at Auschwitz, seemingly under the entrance, you know, the gate that has 'Arbeit Macht Frei' (Work makes you free) over it, to the tune of Gloria Gaynor's 'I will survive'. The question is: was it appropriate? In bad taste?

Now I suppose that if anybody has a right to do as he/she pleases at Auschwitz, it is a holocaust survivor, more so if that was the very camp that they survived, but isn't it a little disrespectful to all those unfortunate enough not to have survived? Or their relatives, friends? It's an extremely knotty problem, don't you think? On the one hand, why shouldn't someone who lived through such an experience celebrate the fact that, 65 years on, they're still around to bear witness? On the other hand are they not guily of, at the very least, very bad taste? Perhaps even more so as the impetus for the viral's success appears to be the gusto with which neo-nazi groups were circulating the link to other like-minded sh*tbags. After all, there are enough people who want to deny that Auschwitz was ever a 'Vernichtungslager' (extermination camp) set up with the stated purpose of gassing as many Jews as possible, or at least those unfit to toil at back-breaking labour from before dawn until dusk and there are many more who are quite prepared to admit it happened but would like to repeat the exercise.

It's difficult to know why YouTube pulled the video. It claims that it was 'copyright infrinement', presumably for using 'I will survive' without permission. However that flies in the face of all the other videos that have been put on YouTube using the same backing track. I'm inclined to think that the bad taste police have been at work again and may have missed the point about the video depicting a survivor and not some neo-nazis taking the p*ss.

So on the one hand you have penguins like me who think people should be able to say and show what they like and on the other hand, you have four fingers and a thumb. OK bad joke, but it difficult to see how censoring this video, ie deleting it totally, normally they just remove the offending soundtrack, serves any purpose. YouTube may have thought it more likely to attract unsavoury comments but, again, in the light of some (most) of the comments on YouTube videos, they are unlikely to have any worse that a whole host of others.

Besides, Jews as a group have a long history of using humour to defuse the almost universal persecution they have had to endure, Mel Brooks' 'The Producers', the 'SS officer's glass eye' joke that did the rounds at Auschwitz, Seinfeld to name but a few. Shouldn't they be allowed, even encouraged? Not everyone can be Primo Levy, can they? In the end, it comes down to a personal value judgement, doesn't it?

Free speech notwithstanding, I am inclined to agree with MG who would not tell jokes about people's speech impairments, complete with 'funny voice', despite the fact that, like the 89 year old Israeli, he has a 'right' to, having suffered a similar affliction. Fine, you can do it in the comfort of your own home but posting it on the internet? Dumb!