Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Holocaust-Denying Radio Host Gets His Job Back

A German radio host who allegedly made Holocaust-denying remarks and also made light of 9/11 has been reinstated to his position after having been temporarily suspended.

Ken Jebsen, the host of the “Jugendwelle” program on Radio Fritz, which is based in Potsdam just outside Berlin, had written in an email to a listener that “Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels implemented the public relations plan of the Holocaust, and the Americans provided fuel for the entire Nazi bombing campaign,” according to a report in the Jerusalem Post. In a separate comment, he said that the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York was a “warm demolition.”

The radio host’s words came to light when the listener sent the reportedly crude, rambling email he received from Jebsen to Henryk M. Broder, a journalist at Die Welt who is considered an expert on modern anti-Semitism. Broder told Bild newspaper on Friday, “This is clear anti-Semitism.”

Representatives of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Berlin Jewish community have expressed outrage that Jebsen has been reinstated as host of the music show, which has a large youthful audience. It is unclear whether any legal steps have been taken, or will be taken, against Jebsen, but some feel that his words meet the criteria for hate crimes under German law.

In contrast, a spokesman for Radio Fritz’s parent company, Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg, told the Post that, although it “regrets the formulation” of Jebsen’s remarks, it does not believe that they are anti-Semitic. It therefore finds no reason not to bring him back as host of “Jugendwelle.”

On November 6, Jebsen spoke up himself on the matter, posting a message on YouTube (which has had over 29,000 views already) titled “I — An Anti-Semite?” In it, he can be heard denying the charge and emphasizing that he is a democrat and humanist.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.