July 27, 2010 16:18

Director Oliver Stone apologises for 'Hitler comments'

However Anti Defamation League says Stone has shown his 'conspiratorial colours'

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone has apologised for remarks he made about Hitler in an interview with The Sunday Times at the weekend (July 25) - however groups including the Anti Defamation League have refused to accept the Oscar winner's explanation. In the interview, Stone posed the question as to why there was such a focus on the Holocaust, suggesting that "the Jewish domination of the media" was the cause.

"They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington," he added. "Israel has fucked up United States foreign policy for years."

However Stone, whose father is Jewish, issued an apology yesterday (July 26) declaring his comments "clumsy".

"In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret," he said.

"Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry... the fact that the Holocaust is still a very important, vivid and current matter today is, in fact, a great credit to the very hard work of a broad coalition of people committed to the remembrance of this atrocity - and it was an atrocity."

However Anti Defamation League director Abraham Foxman has attacked Stone's remarks, declaring: "Oliver Stone has once again shown his conspiratorial colours with his comments about 'Jewish domination of the media' and control over US foreign policy. His words conjure up some of the most stereotypical and conspiratorial notions of undue Jewish power and influence."

The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants also released a statement yesterday in which they said: "We are deeply offended. These are words of hate and a disgraceful evocation of anti-semitism. Shame on Oliver Stone."