Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well
known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an
aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds. I
practically trained a friend of mine who worked next to me on the building site to
develop a sense of humor. I suggested to him that we would promise each other to
invent at least one amusing story daily, about some incident that could happen one
day after our liberation. (p. 54)