(JTA) — Comedian Joan Rivers’ comparison of Costco’s decision not to sell her latest book to the policies of Nazi Germany is inappropriate, the Anti-Defamation League said.
“While Joan Rivers may be right in criticizing Costco’s decision, there is simply no comparison between a private company’s choice not to sell a book and the policies of the Nazi regime that engaged in the systematic persecution and slaughter of millions of Jews and others during the Holocaust," said Abraham Foxman, ADL’s national director and a Holocaust survivor in a statement issued Aug. 10. “Such comparisons only serve to trivialize the Holocaust and are deeply offensive to Jews and other survivors, as well as those Americans who fought valiantly against the Nazis in World War II.”
Rivers said in Aug. 7 interview with the Los Angeles television station KTLA at a Costco store in that city that “People should have the right to have the literature they want. This is the beginning of Nazi Germany.”
In a letter to Rivers, ADL called on her to retract her inappropriate remarks and to refrain from using Holocaust imagery in the future.
Rivers was protesting outside a suburban Los Angeles Costco against the decision by the national chain not to carry her book “I Hate Everything … Starting with Me.”
