The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect demanded an apology from actor Tim Allen after he compared life for Hollywood conservatives to living in “’30s Germany.”
That era, of course, was when Adolf Hilter rose to power and the Nazis began their campaign of mass extermination of Jews and many others they deemed undesirable. The Anne Frank Center called Allen’s comparison “deeply offensive” and said it “trivializes the horrors imposed on Jews in Nazi Germany.”
The “Last Man Standing actor said on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Friday: “You gotta be real careful around here, you know. You’ll get beat up if you don’t believe what everybody believes. It’s like ’30s Germany.”
“Tim, have you lost your mind?” said Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center. “No one in Hollywood today is subjecting you or anyone else to what the Nazis imposed on Jews in the 1930s – the world’s most evil program of dehumanization, imprisonment and mass brutality, implemented by an entire national government, as the prelude for the genocide of nearly an entire people.”
Added Goldstein: “Sorry, Tim, that’s just not the same as getting turned down for a movie role. It’s time for you to leave your bubble to apologize to the Jewish people and, to be sure, the other peoples also targeted by the Nazis.”
On “Jimmy Kimmel Live” Friday, Allen told Kimmel that being a Republican in Hollywood today is “like 1930s Germany. You gotta be real careful around here, you know. You’ll get beat up if you don’t believe what everybody believes.”
ABC, which airs “Last Man Standing,” declined to comment on Allen’s comment to TheWrap, referring inquiries to Allen. His team did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his Nazi Germany comparison.
The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect is the U.S. organization in a worldwide network of Anne Frank organizations that advocate for the better world Anne Frank imagined in “Diary of a Young Girl.” The book, read by millions worldwide, chronicles her life hiding from the Nazis before she was killed in the Holocaust.