Anti-Defamation League scolds Harry Belafonte for comment on Nazis

(RNS) The Anti-Defamation League has chastised entertainer Harry Belafonte for stating that Adolf Hitler “had a lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich.”

On Aug. 9, the ADL, based in New York City, called on Belafonte to apologize, saying the remark was “ignorant and offensive” to Jews.

Belafonte made his remark during an Aug. 5 civil rights march in Atlanta, where he equated the position of African-Americans serving in the Bush administration to that of Jews in the Nazi hierarchy.

Abraham Foxman, ADL’s national director and a Holocaust survivor, said that there were no Jews in the hierarchy of the Nazi regime. “Besides being ignorant and offensive, Mr. Belafonte’s comments are dead wrong. He clearly needs a history lesson.”