Fifteen Holocaust survivors criticized film director Jonathan Glazer for his Oscar speech claiming that Israel had hijacked the Holocaust in service of the conflict, saying that he should be ashamed to have used Auschwitz to attack the Jewish State.
A survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and the only person of his 105 family members to survive, David Schaecter said that Glazer's comments were "factually inaccurate and morally indefensible."
"You chose to use the Holocaust to validate your personal opinion. You made a Holocaust movie and won an Oscar. And you are Jewish. Good for you. But it is disgraceful for you to presume to speak for the six million Jews, including one and a half million children, who were murdered solely because of their Jewish identity," said Schaecter, President of the Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA. "You should be ashamed of yourself for using Auschwitz to criticize Israel."
Israel as the refuge for Holocaust survivors
The 94-year-old said that it was disgraceful that Glazer saw fit to speak on behalf of Holocaust survivors, many of whom were offered no refuge in other countries and where there was "no Jewish nation to which we could flee."
"If the creation, existence, and survival of the State of Israel as a Jewish state equates to 'occupation' in your mind, then you obviously learned nothing from your movie," said Schaecter.
Schaecter said that the current political landscape was the result of past Arab leaders who had rejected the existence of the State of Israel, and the current conflict was a result of Iran and its proxies trying to foil the peace with Israel sought by several Arab states. Iran's efforts were abetted by many who "through naiveté or malice, blame 'the occupation.'”
The Holocaust survivor said that the current situation in Israel had nothing to do with the Holocaust, a genocide that was also preceded hundreds of years by the Jewish people's presence and right to live in the territory.
Schaecter criticized Glazer's use of the Oscars stage to compare the October 7 Massacre to Israeli self-defense.
Survivors and their families signed the letter
The letter was signed by the HSF USA Executive Committee. Survivors Dena Axelrod, Magda Bader, Esther Finder, Renee Firestone, Ella Frumkin, Jay Ipson, Vera Karliner, Annette Lantos, Louise Lawrence-Israels, Shirley Rubin, Anita Schuster, Charles Srebnick, Agnes Vertes, and Thomas Weiss were signatories. Anita Schuster, the spouse of a Holocaust survivor and four children of survivors, Klaire Firestone, Katrina Lantos Swett, Steve Moskovic, and Neal Schaecter, also signed on.
Glazer won the Oscar for Best International Film on Sunday night for a film about the family of the commandant of Auschwitz living on the death-camp grounds.
"Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It's shaped all of our past and present. Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation that has led to conflict for so many innocent people," Glazer said in his acceptance speech. "Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization -- how do we resist?"