SPICER APOLOGIZES FOR HITLER COMPARISON,
Apologizes for Holocaust comparison
WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Sean Spicer apologized yesterday after appearing to forget about the atrocities of the Holocaust while comparing Adolf Hitler with Syrian President Bashar Assad during a cringe-worthy televised briefing with reporters.
His shaky performance and attempts to clarify the remark renewed criticism of Spicer, whose future in the role is a persistent source of speculation.
“You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” Spicer said, arguing that Russia and other countries that support Assad — whom Spicer at one point referred to as “Ashad” — are on the wrong side of history.
Spicer’s rendering ignored the horror of the Holocaust, in which gas chambers were used as part of a genocide campaign that killed 6 million Jews as well as millions of others, including Gypsies and gay people.
An attempt to clarify the statement later in the briefing only compounded the problem, drawing more unwanted attention.
“He was not using gas on his own people the same way,” Spicer said. He referred to the Syria bomb victims as “innocent.”
He then added that he was aware of “Holocaust centers” — an apparent fumbled reference to death camps — and that he meant that Hitler did not use gas in the middle of towns.
The suggestion that Holocaust victims were not Hitler’s “own people” — intended or not — hit a sore nerve for Jews and other victims who considered themselves loyal subjects of Germany. Hitler’s propaganda cast them as disloyal and inferior.
There is also a painful and long history of Holocaust deniers who falsely claim, among other things, that gas chambers were not used to kill Jews.
After his own news briefing ended, Spicer attempted another clarification in written form that seemed to make a similar point.
“In no way was I trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust,” he said. “I was trying to draw a distinction of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on population centers. Any attack on innocent people is reprehensible and inexcusable.”
In making the case against Assad, Spicer appeared to be trying to draw a distinction made in a separate briefing by Defense Secretary James N. Mattis.
“Even in World War II, chemical weapons were not used on battlefields,” Mattis said, saying that such weapons had been disavowed internationally since World War I.
Spicer’s comments came on the first day of Passover, in which Jews celebrate freedom from slavery.