WATCH: Ben Carson Makes Fun of Holocaust After Survivor Gets Honorary Degree

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By Daniel J. Solomon January 31, 2017

During his presidential campaign, Ben Carson said he is proud of his bluntness and thick skin, and an eight-year-old video clip, demonstrates his consistency: Trump’s nominee to lead the Housing and Urban Development Department, made a gag about the Holocaust — in front of a Holocaust survivor.

In the clip, Carson is heard joshing about the Holocaust — and anorexia — at Lafayette College’s ceremony, only a few minutes after survivor Nechama Tec, a famous sociologist, receives an honorary award.

“I was talking to another group about how the fashion industry has gotten the young ladies to think they’re supposed to be so skinny they look like they’ve escaped from a concentration camp and a Jewish man got offended,” Carson told the audience. “He said, ‘You can’t mention concentration camps, that’s too delicate, it would be as if I said something to you about slavery.’ I told him, You can mention slavery all you want, it doesn’t bother me.’”

Carson has run into trouble before for Holocaust comments, as when he said that he opposed gun control because the Holocaust would not have happened if Jews had owned firearms.

Last week, the White House issued a controversial statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day that omitted specific reference to Jews.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at solomon@forward.com or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

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