Germans Agree ‘Hey Jude’ Weirdest Holocaust Song Ever

The vocalist in the song mispronounces the word as if it is English, further generating confusion over the message.

Hamburg, August 19 – Germans and German-speakers are expressing puzzlement at what, by its title, should be a song about German persecution of Jews, but whose lyrics do not seem to express any such sentiment.

Paul McCartney’s “Hey Jude” explicitly invokes the German word for “Jew” that was mandated on yellow stars to identify Jews in the Nazi era, local variations of which were then applied in countries occupied by the Wehrmacht. However, the lyrics of the song say nothing about what those stars signified or their ultimate purpose, which was to isolate, dehumanize, and ultimately facilitate the removal of Jews from German society via extermination.

Instead, the song appears to encourage the Jew not to despair, that brighter days are ahead, and that there is hope for the problematic relationship that currently troubles him – hardly a message consonant with the Nazi mantra of “the Jews are our misfortune.” Even weirder, says University of Hamburg Professor of German Culture Reeper Bahn, the vocalist in the song mispronounces the word as if it is English, further generating confusion over the message.

“We’ve considered that perhaps Hey Jude is a piece of avant-garde, postmodern art, specifically meant to challenge existing assumptions regarding consistency, meaning, and context,” he said. “But that does not fit with what we know of the artist and his work. Mr. McCartney is in general quite forthright with his lyrics and music, and nothing else in his portfolio supports the notion that he seeks to undermine or question those notions.” Had the lyricist instead been fellow Beatles George Harrison or John Lennon, noted Professor Bahn, the subversive social criticism angle could not be ruled out.

Even more puzzling, says Würzemburg University post-doctoral researcher Jooden Rauss, McCartney, Lennon, and Harrison spent several months in Germany before their triumphant entrance on to the British – and then international – rock scene. “That time in Hamburg should have exposed them directly to German culture and sensibilities,” he said. “It is beyond mystifying that McCartney would, apparently,  so obtusely throw around the term ‘Jude’ as if it means something entirely different from what it manifestly does.”

McCartney himself has declined to give what experts consider an adequate explanation. “He has said it’s really about John Lennon’s son Julian, but what kind of sense does that make?” challenged Bahn. “My sense is that he was trying to convey something about German attitudes toward Jews, but failed miserably, and he’s just too proud to admit it.”