Shame on you, Holocaust survivor tells Zone of Interest director

A 94-year-old Holocaust survivor has penned an open letter denouncing the “factually inaccurate and morally indefensible” comments made by The Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer during his Oscar acceptance speech on Sunday.

Written by Holocaust Survivor’s Foundation (HSF) president David Schaecter and signed by 18 members of the organisation’s US executive committee, the letter attacks Glazer’s use of his platform “to equate Hamas’s maniacal brutality against innocent Israelis with Israel’s difficult but necessary self-defence in the face of Hamas’s ongoing barbarity”.

Schaecter refers to the moment when Glazer said he and Jewish colleagues were accepting the award for best international feature film “as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.”

In response, Schaecter writes: “The ‘occupation’ of which you speak has nothing to do with the Holocaust. The Jewish people’s existence and right to live in the land of Israel predates the Holocaust by hundreds of years.”