Longtime Fox News host Greg Gutfield drew ire from the White House, the Anti-Defamation League and the Auschwitz Memorial this week after saying that Jewish people “had to be useful” to the Nazis to survive the Holocaust.
The remarks came during a debate on Fox News’ hit show “The Five” over Florida’s controversial new curriculum for middle school students that includes lessons on “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
“Did you ever read ‘Man’s Search for Meaning?’ Vik Frankl talks about how you had to survive in a concentration camp by having skills. You had to be useful,” Guttfield said. “Utility, utility kept you alive.”
Fox News did not respond to an email requesting comment on Gutfeld’s remark and whether the top-rated cable news network planned on addressing it. They recently paid $12 million to a former Tucker Carlson staffer to settle a lawsuit alleging the working environment was rife with sexism and antisemitism, including mocking of the staffer's Jewish faith.
Viktor Frankl was an Austrian Holocaust survivor and a psychiatrist who dissected his three years in four concentration camps in his 1946 book “Man’s Search for Meaning.” He examined the tactics he used to maintain a sense of purpose while imprisoned by the Nazis. Frankl’s father, mother, brother and wife were murdered at concentration camps, according to a biography published by the Vienna-based Viktor Frankl institute.
Gutfeld's comments drew swift condemnation from a number of advocates, including from the White House.
“What Fox News allowed to be said on their air yesterday — and has so far failed to condemn — is an obscenity,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement to CNN. “In defending a horrid, dangerous, extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of Americans who suffered from the evil of enslavement, a Fox News host told another horrid, dangerous and extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of people who suffered from the evils of the Holocaust.”
“Let’s get something straight that the American people understand full well and that is not complicated: there was nothing good about slavery; there was nothing good about the Holocaust. Full stop,” he added.
“We couldn’t let this one stand,” White House communications director Ben Labolt later said on Twitter.
In a lengthy statement of its own, the Auschwitz Memorial museum wrote that Frankl’s work “highlights how some Jews became registered prisoners and might have used their skills to gain favor or prolong their lives in that particular setting. Yet, it never gave them complete protection.”
“While some of the ghettos seemed to have the goal of being productive and Jews were used as slave labor there, being ‘useful’ did not guarantee safety, as the Nazis eventually decided to liquidate them, leading to the murder of those considered valuable as well,” the museum said, noting “it is crucial to remember that the Holocaust was a systematic genocide with the ultimate aim of exterminating the entire Jewish population.”
The museum wrote some Jews survived because “they were considered temporarily useful” and were spared death by the collapse of the Nazi regime. It encouraged Gutfeld, Fox News and others to avoid oversimplifications.
The Anti-Defamation League said in a statement to the Daily Beast that while it was unclear the exact point Gutfeld was trying to make, the argument that the Holocaust had a beneficial impact on Jews was “nonsense.”
“It is not clear from Gutfeld’s comments if he is arguing that Jews learned skills in the Holocaust, or that Jews who had skills had a better chance of staying alive. The latter is something that is well-documented, while the former is nonsense. That said, many millions of Jews, who, in Gutfeld’s words, had ‘utility,’ were still murdered,” the prominent Jewish group wrote.
Gutfeld, a daily presence on “The Five” and hosts a 10 p.m. political comedy show “Gutfeld!”, made the comments about the Holocaust in response to his Jewish co-host Jessica Tarlov.
“Obviously I’m not Black, but I’m Jewish. Would someone say about the Holocaust for instance, that there were some benefits for Jews? While they were hanging out in concentration camps, you learned a strong work ethic,” Tarlov said.
Six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, along with at least five million others from groups targeted by the Nazis, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.