JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Follow up: ADL tracking Nazi comparisons in health-care debate

By Uriel Heilman · October 16, 2009

Yesterday, I cited New York magazine's story, "The right calls Obama Hitler. Why aren't Jewish groups making more noise?"

Today, the Anti-Defamation League responds with this development as evidence that it's protesting comparisons of President Obama with Nazis. Here's an except from the ADL news release:

A prominent Christian religious leader has apologized to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for comparing proposed healthcare reform measures to "what the Nazis did" and for bestowing a Josef Mengele Award on the president's chief healthcare advisor.

 

In a letter to ADL, Dr. Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said he deeply regretted his remarks. "I was using hyperbole for effect and never intended to actually equate anyone in the Obama administration with Dr. Mengele," he wrote.

 

"I apologize to everyone who found such references hurtful," Dr. Land continued.  "Given the pain and suffering of so many Jewish and other victims of the Nazi regime, I will certainly seek to exercise far more care in my use of language in future discussions of the issues at stake in the healthcare debate." 

 

His apology came in response to concerns, first raised by ADL, that his words were "inappropriate, insensitive and unjustified."

 

In a phone conversation with Dr. Land, Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director and a Holocaust survivor, explained why such comparisons are offensive and diminish the history and memory of the six million Jews and five million others who died at the hands of the Nazis.