Tokyo 2020, opening ceremony director removed for Holocaust commentary

Kentaro Kobayashi, director of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics opening ceremony scheduled for tomorrow, has been removed from his post following reports of his past comments on the Holocaust. This was announced by the Tokyo Organizing Committee. Reports of Kobayashi’s comments quickly attracted criticism, including from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which condemned what it called Kobayashi’s anti-Semitic jokes. According to Japanese media reports, Kobayashi referred to the mass murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis in a script for his comic act in 1998 saying, “Let’s play the Holocaust.” “Any person, however creative, has no right to mock the victims of the Nazi genocide. The Nazi regime also gassed disabled Germans. Any association of this person with the Tokyo Olympics would insult the memory of 6 million Jews and would be a cruel mockery of the Paralympics, ”said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the SWC and Director of Global Social Action.