He made fun of the Holocaust, leaves work with the director of the Tokyo 2020 opening ceremony, one day before the event

The Tokyo Olympic Games Organising Committee has dismissed the director of the opening ceremony because of a Holocaust joke he made during a comic show in 1998.

The president of the organising committee, Seiko Hashimoto, said on the eve of the opening ceremony, that director Kentaro Kobayashi has been fired. He was accused of using a blanket on the Holocaust in his comedy, including the phrase "Let's play the Holocaust" ( alluding to being something created).

We discovered that Mr. Kobayashi, in his interpretation, used a phrase to mock a historical tragedy,” said Hashimoto. “We apologise deeply for causing such a problem the day before the opening ceremony and causing problems and concerns for many parties involved, both for people in Tokyo and the rest of the country. ”

The opening ceremony of the Games postponed by the pandemic is scheduled for Friday, and will be held without spectators as a move to prevent the spread of coronary infections, although some officials, friends and media will participate.

In a 1998 scheme, Kobayashi and another humorist pretended to be a famous pair of TV entertainers for children, and Kobayashi himself referred to several paper dolls, describing them as the “ato of the time when the cile played the Holocaust”.

The comic couple later made fun of imagining the excitement of the showmaker on this Holocaust reference. This “scene that I had written contained extremely inappropriate lines”, apologised in a statement to Kobayashi, a very famous show character in Japan, apologised in a statement.

Shortly after the discovery of a video clip and Kobayash performance scenario, the criticisms flooded into social networks. Everyone, however creative, has no right to make fun of the victims of Nazi genocide,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and director of global social action at the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiessenthal Centre.

Any association of this person with the Tokyo Olympic Games would offend the memory of 6 million Jews and falsely mock the Paralympade,” he said, remembering that disabled people were also destroyed in Nazi concentration camps.