He’s known for a prankish public persona laced with several layers of irony. But Jewish comedian Nathan Fielder has always insisted he’s sincere about supporting Holocaust education.
On a 2015 episode of his reality show “Nathan For You,” Fielder launched Summit Ice, a nonprofit winter apparel brand that incorporated Holocaust education into its marketing. “It’s a cool jacket. But 6 million Jews did die, and that number is important,” Fielder said while promoting the brand on Conan O’Brien’s talk show that year. He has devoted all of its proceeds to Holocaust education and fighting bigotry.
Fielder has kept the line active ever since with pop-up stores and new products, claiming it has raised millions for Holocaust education and recently referring to it as “my proudest achievement.”
But on Sunday, he revealed that this mission had hit a stumbling block since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, when Paramount Plus pulled the 2015 episode from its streaming service. Fielder said the episode was first removed in Germany.
“In late 2023, a decision was made by Paramount Plus Germany to remove the episode in their region after they became uncomfortable with what they called ‘anything that touches on antisemitism in the aftermath of the Israel/Hamas attacks,’” Fielder said on a new episode of his latest show, HBO’s comedic docuseries “The Rehearsal.” Germany also has strict laws around speech incorporating Nazi and Holocaust imagery.
In emailed correspondence with Paramount executives, Fielder said, “the network confirmed in their response that it was taken down intentionally and gave me a one-word explanation as to why: ‘Sensitivities.’” On the show, he displayed snippets of what he said were the actual emails alongside staged reenactments of an actor playing Fielder receiving the news.
While “The Rehearsal” is intended as a comedy, Fielder’s allegations probe at a deeper layer of anxiety that many Jews have shared both before and since Oct. 7, 2023: the difficulties of educating the public about antisemitism and the Holocaust.
Fielder goes further. He also depicts the streaming service as Nazis, complete with a WWII-esque map of their decision spreading throughout the world, and a staged recreation of their regional “office” to look like Nazi headquarters, with armed guards wearing armbands depicting the streaming service’s blue logo.
“This act by Germany triggered the attention of other European Paramount branches, and they in turn pulled the episode too,” he says in the “Rehearsal” episode. “Before long, the ideology of Paramount Plus Germany had spread to the entire globe, eliminating all Jewish content that made them uncomfortable. This is real, by the way.”
A spokesperson for Paramount Plus confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the “Nathan For You” episode had been pulled from their service “following a standards review,” but would not elaborate. The episode, which originally aired on Comedy Central, is still available to stream on Max; a spokesperson for Warner Brothers Discovery, which owns HBO and Max, declined to comment further.
A commercial for a (possibly ironic) rebranding campaign for Summit Ice, Jewish comedian Nathan Fielder’s outdoor apparel line founded to incorporate Holocaust education, April 27, 2025. (Screenshot via YouTube)
Summit Ice also did not immediately return requests for comment. But the clothing line — which Fielder develops in the 2015 “Nathan For You” episode after consulting with a rabbi — announced a “New Era” rebrand of sorts in conjunction with the “Rehearsal” episode. The announcement, like most things Fielder-related, was laced with what are likely heavy doses of irony.
“In October 2023, our sales plummeted by nearly 90% and we couldn’t figure out why,” reads an updated “About Us” page on the brand’s website. “After extensive market research, only one answer made sense: consumers had suddenly become more savvy about the quality of softshell jackets. Therefore, we believe the best way to achieve our goal of raising awareness is by shifting our primary brand focus from genocide to craftsmanship.”
The site adds: “The practice of putting charity ahead of quality has come to an end.” It concludes by declaring the company will donate fewer of its proceeds to Holocaust awareness going forward, “at least in the short term,” in order to improve the quality of its merchandise. It concludes, “In this new era we Stand For Everything™. Now that’s something no one can deny.”
The Summit Ice episode of “Nathan For You” in 2015 includes a segment in which a misguided Fielder launches his brand with swastikas and other explicit Nazi imagery, before pivoting. It also discusses Fielder’s motivation for launching the brand: his discovery that the founder of an outerwear brand he had preferred previously had memorialized a Holocaust denier.
In his “The Rehearsal” follow-up, Fielder hints that material like this may have retroactively run afoul of Germany’s strict speech laws around depictions of Nazis, the Holocaust and antisemitism, which he suggests failed to carve out an exception for Jewish art.
“I know you guys probably feel a lot of shame about what you did in the past, and now you’re trying to compensate by being the world leaders in fighting antisemitism,” Fielder tells an actor playing a Nazi-like Paramount Plus Germany executive. “But when it comes to art, I think you have to know your place and you have to let us Jews express ourselves. Because honestly the way you’re approaching this whole thing, people might get the wrong idea of what you actually stand for.”
For years the largest named beneficiary of Summit Ice had been the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, in Fielder’s hometown. The museum did not return JTA requests for comment. Its leadership has expressed its gratitude to the comedian, noting that, as a young student at the Jewish day school Vancouver Talmud Torah, he had been moved hearing a Holocaust survivor’s talk presented by the museum.
“His commitment is an example of the positive action one can take when faced with Holocaust denial,” the museum’s leaders wrote, also saying Fielder “embodies the lessons of Tikkun Olam, the concept of performing acts of kindness to perfect or repair the world.”
The previous season of “The Rehearsal” also dealt heavily with Judaism; in one episode, Fielder hires a Hebrew tutor for an actor playing his son. As a punchline, the tutor urges a visibly uncomfortable Fielder to use his “platform” to advocate for Israel.
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