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Foxman Calls Beck’s Comments ‘Horrific’

‘He doesn’t understand what the Shoah was all about’

by
Marc Tracy
November 11, 2010
Abraham Foxman.(Life)
Abraham Foxman.(Life)

Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, stopped short of calling Glenn Beck an anti-Semite, but told me that his comments (see here and here) regarding George Soros’s role in the Holocaust as a young boy were “horrific, over-the-top, and out-of-line.” Foxman—who was born in 1940 in Poland, and saved by a Polish nanny who baptized him and raised him as a Catholic to protect him—pointed to Beck’s statement, made yesterday on his radio show, that Soros “help[ed] send the Jews to the death camps.” “I think he doesn’t understand what the Shoah was all about,” Foxman said.

I reached Foxman this morning by phone. “I think one can disagree with George Soros, one can like him or dislike him, one can be opposed to him,” he told me. “But to judge him on his role during the Holocaust is not only offensive, but horrific, over-the-top, and out-of-line. Not even Holocaust survivors have the audacity to judge other Jews during the Holocaust. For a political commentator and entertainer to go as far as to say, quote, Here’s a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the camps, is so over-the-top, so inexcusable.”

Drawing on personal experience, Foxman added, “I believe George Soros when he says there is nothing to apologize for. When I was six, I spat on Jews, because I was taught to spit on Jews. You want to go back to history, the Pope was in Hitler Youth.”

He continued: “The other thing I find unacceptable is it’s chutzpah for him to set standards for what makes a good Jew. We don’t set standards for what makes a good Christian or a good Mormon. It’s arrogant.”

As for Beck’s other charges against Soros, Foxman expressed less concern. “People involved in global finance have been called all kinds of things,” he said. “I don’t think that’s anti-Semitism.”

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.