Billy Joel embraces his Jewish identity in HBO's "And So It Goes"

In HBO’s newly released two-part documentary And So It Goes, music icon Billy Joel offers an intimate portrait of his life, digging deep into his Jewish heritage and the haunting legacy of his father’s past in Nazi Germany. The film arrives at a time of renewed scrutiny over rising antisemitism, something Joel directly addresses.

One of the documentary’s most poignant moments revisits August 2017, when Joel stepped onto the stage at Madison Square Garden wearing a yellow Star of David on his jacket. The gesture came days after the violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists marched chanting, “Jews will not replace us.”

“I was angry,” Joel says in the documentary, directed by Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin. “Here they are marching through an American city saying ‘Jews will not replace us.’ We fought a war to, you know, defeat these people.”

Joel didn’t hold back when criticizing former President Donald Trump’s response to the rally, particularly his infamous comment that there were “very fine people on both sides.”

“He should have come out and said, ‘Those are bad people,’” Joel insists. “There is no qualifying it. The Nazis are not good people. Period.”

Wearing the yellow star, infamously used by the Nazis to identify and isolate Jews, was Joel’s personal declaration. “No matter what, I will always be a Jew,” he says, placing a hand over his heart.

The film also explores Joel’s complex family history, much of which he only uncovered in adulthood. His father, Helmut (later known as Howard), fled Nazi Germany after experiencing firsthand the antisemitic horrors of Hitler’s rise. As a boy, Helmut watched Nazi rallies take place just beyond the fence of his home. “My dad would look over the fence while they were doing all these antisemitic speeches,” Joel recounts. “I can’t imagine the trauma to watch the SS parade espousing these principles.”

Helmut was eventually expelled from school, and his family was stripped of their rights and their textile business in Nuremberg. After being forced to sell it, the factory was repurposed for chilling use. “They actually started to manufacture the striped pajamas that the prisoners in the concentration camps had to wear,” Joel reveals. “That was made by Joel Macht Fabrik.”

Some family members managed to escape to Switzerland. “If my grandparents had been found on the train with the documents that said ‘Jew,’ they would have been sent immediately to a concentration camp,” Joel says. “They got out. A miracle.”

Joel didn’t reconnect with his father until his 20s, when he tracked him down in Vienna while on tour. That meeting also introduced him to his half-brother, Alexander. The emotional reunion inspired the song “Vienna.”

Alexander, who appears in the documentary, explains that his father never fully recovered from his experiences. “The first week he was there after it was liberated and saw the terrible things, it was something that deeply traumatized him,” he says, referring to Helmut’s service in the U.S. Army, during which he helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp.

While the film includes rare moments of connection, such as footage of Joel and his classically trained father playing piano together, And So It Goes ultimately paints a sobering picture of intergenerational trauma and the persistence of antisemitism.

“I’m still trying to put the pieces together,” Joel admits.

The documentary is not just a personal reflection but also a cultural reckoning, reminding viewers of the deep scars left by history and the importance of standing against hate.