Mel Gibson's Holocaust Comments Spark Controversy

Mel Gibson can't seem to win - at least, if you are one of his critics.

The latest brouhaha involving Gibson and some critics in the Jewish community was ignited when details of his interview with Peggy Noonan for the March edition of Reader's Digest were made public.

According to the New York Times, Gibson's remarks to Noonan published in the March issue of Reader's Digest "raised hackles among Jewish leaders."

What were Gibson's controversial remarks? The actor went on record to contradict his father's claims that the Holocaust did not take place.

What angered his critics? Gibson, while acknowledging the horrors of the Holocaust, discussed the overall horrors of World War II and communist genocide in the Ukraine.

The Times reported Gibson's decision to make changes in his film "The Passion of the Christ," as reported on NewMax.com Tuesday. Gibson has removed the scene of Jewish high priest Caiaphas saying, of Jesus' death, "His blood be on us and on our children."

But Gibson's decision to cut the scene, followed by an olive branch letter to the ADL and his latest comments to Noonan, have done little to appease his critics.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, has accused Gibson of "insensitivity when he compared Jewish suffering in the Holocaust to that of millions of others who died in the war."

Among other things Gibson discussed in his interview with Noonan, he told her that "he loved his father," according to the Times. Noonan persisted, telling Gibson: "You're going to have to go on record. The Holocaust happened, right?"

Gibson made clear his position: "I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened.

"War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century 20 million people died in the Soviet Union."

Gibson had previously denied that his father was a Holocaust denier, "insisting that his father had merely questioned the fact that as many as 6 million Jews had perished in the Holocaust.

But Gibson's summation of the deaths of millions of victims of World War II and Communism angered Rabbi Hier, who wrote Gibson: "We are not engaging in competitive martyrdom, but in historical truth. To describe Jewish suffering during the Holocaust as 'some of them were Jews in concentration camps' is an afterthought that feeds right into the hands of Holocaust deniers and revisionists."

Not so, said Gibson's spokesman, Alan Nierob, who told the Times that Gibson's remarks to Noonan were in no way aimed at further inflaming Jewish leaders.

"There's no doubt in my mind that not only does he know the Holocaust and acknowledge it, he has shed tears over it, with me," he told the Times.

But Rabbi Hier insisted that Gibson missed a chance to reduce the tension with Jewish groups.

"I think he was lobbed an easy question. He could've used the occasion to take us on a different road. Instead, he marginalized the Holocaust, he diluted its significance, and it's a lie," he said. "Either he is very ignorant of sensitivities in Jewish communities of riling survivors, those who have lost loved ones, or he is doing it deliberately."

The Times wrote that ADL head Abe Foxman also protested Gibson's remark on the Holocaust.

"At the very least it was ignorant, at the very most it's insensitive," Foxman said. "And you know what? He doesn't get that either. He doesn't begin to understand the difference between dying in a famine and people being cremated solely for what they are."

Mel Gibson fights back and talks with NewsMax Magazine – click here for new revelations

Editor's note:
James Hirsen’s "Tales from the Left Coast" - Find out the real story behind Mel Gibson’s "The Passion," and more!

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