Tokyo Olympics Fires Ceremony Director Over 1998 Holocaust Joke [View all]

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Tokyo Olympics Fires Ceremony Director Over 1998 Holocaust Joke

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/tokyo-olympics-fires-ceremony-director-over-1998-holocaust-joke/ar-AAMqdiD?ocid=msedgntp

(Bloomberg) -- The Tokyo Olympics faced the latest in a series of PR disasters when they were forced to fire the director of the opening ceremony a day before it takes place, after a decades-old video emerged of him joking about the Holocaust.

“We have discovered that Kentaro Kobayashi in the past made fun of a painful part of history, so he has today been removed from his post,” Olympics chief Seiko Hashimoto told reporters Thursday. “We apologize deeply for the trouble and worry caused.”

A video shared on social media showed Kobayashi, when he was working as a comedian years ago, joking about the Holocaust as part of a skit. The Mainichi newspaper said the video dated to 1998. The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a statement condemning his remarks as “malicious.”

“Any association of this person to the Tokyo Olympics would insult the memory of six million Jews,” it cited the center’s Associate Dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper as saying.