When viewers tuned in to Saturday Night Live last week they were probably expecting cutting-edge comedy, but Michael Che went a bit further than the usual with some-not-so-funny remarks about the Holocaust.
According to media reports, Mr Che said:
“GoDaddy has shut down a website that hosts a ‘Miss Hitler’ beauty pageant. Coincidentally ‘Miss Hitler Beauty Pageant’ was the working title for ‘The Ingraham Angle.’ By the way Colin (his co-host), if you’re wondering who the winner of the ‘Miss Hitler’ pageant, it was Miss Israel.”
The site that hosted the neo-Nazi competition has been shut down by GoDaddy following a global campaign by the Anti-Defamation Commission.
The remarks have made a lot of people quite upset, namely The Anti-Defamation Commission which slammed the ‘joke’ as insensitive and hurtful.
Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission, said:
“Maybe in Michael Che’s world there is something entertaining and funny about Hitler and modern-day neo-Nazis, but the children of the millions who perished, the soldiers who sacrificed their lives to defeat Hitler, and the survivors are not laughing at his tasteless and insulting remarks.
This is the mocking and debasing of the Holocaust of the lowest kind, and it makes no difference that the person making this ‘joke’ was a comedian which we usually expect to push the boundaries.
Worse, Mr Che seems to compare Israelis and Jews, the victims of Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’, with those monsters who committed the worst crime in history.
This is an equation that not only minimises the Nazi horrors and the unimaginable suffering of the victims, but labels every Israeli a genocidal murderer. Such thoughtless lines only may fan the flames of hatred at a time when antisemitism has increased to dangerous levels.
How can anyone with the vaguest knowledge of history equate the organised, industrial liquidation of six million Jews in gas chambers, in death camps, in ghettos and in open fields to what is happening in Israel?
Nothing compares to the unprecedented and unfathomable scale of the destruction sowed by Hitler and his collaborators across Europe, including the massacre of 1.5 million children.
I hope Mr Che does some soul searching, and apologises for his hurtful words.”