Holocaust survivor responds to Greg Gutfeld comment on Fox about ‘useful’ people in concentration camps

‘My father was an accountant. And he had, basically, negotiating skills. He and my brother were gassed in Auschwitz’

A Holocaust suvivor has called on Fox New and host Greg Gutfeld to apologise for his "disgusting" remarks about surviving in concentration camps.

Gutfeld courted controversy on Monday during a segment on the Fox talk show The Five, where the pannelists were discussing Florida’s new slavery curriculum, which teaches students that slaves “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit".

One of the commenters on the panel, Jessica Tarlov, said that provision within the standards made her uncomfortable. As a Jewish person, she felt a similar framing of the Holocaust would be highly offensive.

Gutfeld then compared the situation to Jews who “had to survive in a concentration camp by having skills”. He said: “You had to be useful. Utility. Utility kept you alive.”

“I’m disgusted, basically,” said Holocaust survivor Michael Bornstein, while responding to Gutfeld’s comments.

“My father was an accountant. And he had, basically, negotiating skills. He and my brother were gassed in Auschwitz," Mr Bornstein told CNN.

He continued: "My mother knew how to pack – learned how to pack bullets that killed Jewish people.

“There were over six million people killed in the Holocaust, over a million people killed in Auschwitz, and there’s no silver lining to killing six million people, or talking about slaves and the benefits of slaves and learning what they were doing.”

Debbie Bornstein Holinstat, Mr Bornstein’s daughter, told CNN that while Holocaust conspiracy theories on the internet were not uncommon, but it was shocking to see a host at a major news network spewing “the same kind of garbage that minimizes the murder of six million people”.

“That is what is really shocking and really, really dangerous and upsetting," she said.

Mr Bronstein called on Fox News to apologise, saying: "I think people are looking for notoriety. Whatever it takes to get the audience to listen to the news, whether it’s fake news or whatever is necessary, and I think it has to stop.”

“As I said, Fox News should apologise, the host should apologise, and there’s no room for this fake news on television,” he added.

The Fox News host was criticised by the White House and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, who called his remark an inaccurate description of the Nazi genocide.