"Gaza Is Auschwitz": A Holocaust Analogy That Sparked Deep Jewish Pain in France

The Licra (The International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism) and the Crif (Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions) condemned on Sunday the comments made the day before by host Thierry Ardisson on France 2, comparing Gaza to Auschwitz. He apologized to "his Jewish friends" the same day.

"Gaza is Auschwitz, that's all there is to it," Thierry Ardisson declared Saturday evening on the show "Quelle Époque!" hosted by Léa Salamé, referring to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration and extermination camp in Poland. "People will tell us 'but you knew,' that's what's crazy about it," he added, referring to the situation in the Gaza Strip.

On Sunday, LICRA "once again condemned the trivialization of outrageous comparisons and the prevailing confusion. Nazism and the Holocaust are not the alpha and omega of all national and international crises. Gaza is not Auschwitz," it wrote on the social network X.

The president of CRIF, Yonathan Arfi, also declared: "No, Thierry Ardisson, Gaza is not Auschwitz! The memory of the Holocaust is never more frequently invoked in public debate than by those who want to turn it against the Jews," declared Mr. Arfi. "Since October 7, I have deplored the distress of all civilian populations, Israeli and Palestinian. "But for what other conflict do we use these comparisons with the Holocaust? No criticism of Israel justifies Nazifying it," he wrote.