Today, we’re sharing a story performed by Karin Babbitt, a comedian, teacher, writer, performer, and the child of an Auschwitz survivor. All of these identifiers have played an essential role in shaping Karin’s storytelling style, which she might describe the same way she did her college thesis to us: as a deliberate and balanced mix of horror and humor. This ability to blend the terrible with the beautiful is Karin’s most valuable survival tool, and she uses it quickly and cleverly to process those things, in one form or another, that we all must confront to make life livable.

It’s a lot to navigate—how to survive a survivor. How can one honor the story that needs to be told and remembered without letting it consume one’s own story and sense of self?

Karin’s story unfolds like two vignettes clashing and grinding against each other to create a snapshot of life as a child in the Hollywood Hills with a mother and a culture at odds with everything else. Our conversation has the same feel—perspectives, cultures, and identities all at odds, trying to understand themselves and each other. Throughout the entire episode, there is an undeniable sense of burden and pressure, with no easy place to set them down.

Karin’s a skilled storyteller and a great conversationalist. She openly shared with us her unique circumstances within the world and how the blessings/burdens garnered from those circumstances have continued to dominate most aspects of her life. Her story is messy, painful, convoluted, preoccupied, theatrical, and unfinished, and yet somehow she has distilled it down to a powerful and polished performance.

It is also, above all else, beautifully, wonderously, achingly hers.

We’re so glad she shared it with us.

Check out Karin’s website and give her some love! She has a new album available there called Not In a Cult.

A semi-curated list of items, subjects, and places mentioned in Karin’s interview:

The Holocaust

Auschwitz Concentration Camp

Hollywood Hills

Judaism (earliest monotheistic religion)

Bat Mitzvah (A coming-of-age ritual in Judaism for females)

Matzah brei (Yiddish for “fried matzo”)

Canter’s Deli

Bonomo (sp) Italy (?)

The Appell (torturous roll call)

Max & Morris (aka Max and Moritz by Wilhelm Busch)

The Katzenjammer Kids (American comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks)

Struwwelpeter (Book by Heinrich Hoffmann)

Baroque Era

Josef Mengele (the “Angel of Death,” Nazi German officer)

Alice Miller (Book: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence)

Dina Babbitt (Karin’s mom’s Wiki page)

Konstantin Stanislavski (famous theatre practitioner)

Steve Bluestein (comedian, writer)

“CFU” (Check For Understanding)

Prompt:is presented by In a Nutshell Storytelling

Hostest: Amy Bee

Mostest: Keith Lowell Jensen

Producer: Aaron Carnes

Thank you to:

DJ Yuma Tripp for allowing us to use his song “Lazy Skank” for our episodes and our live show.

Hyperpixel for audio and video services.

Sofia Theatre for a beautiful stage to gather around.

Babalou for watching over our event table and engaging with people in the best way possible.

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