ADL Wants Sarandon to Apologize for Nazi Remark

Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon is feeling the heat from Catholic and Jewish groups after an interview with actor Bob Balaban at The Hamptons Film Festival in New York. The Huffington Post mistakenly identified a Newsday interview as the source for comment in which the actress referred to Pope Benedict as a Nazi.

There was no Newsday interview. Fortunately, Southhampton Patch's Brendan J. O'Reilly was there with an audio tape of the conversation as reported below:

"She gave a copy of the film to the pope," Sarandon said of Sister Helen. "The last one, not this Nazi one, the one before." The audience broke out in laughter at the shock of how candidly Sarandon spoke, then clapped.

"It's a shame you're so afraid to say what you really think," Balaban joked.

"He was a Nazi Youth, I'm not talking, or making it up," Sarandon replied.

She did, however, get the name of the group wrong: Benedict XVI was a member of the Hitler Youth, a paramilitary Nazi group, but membership was mandatory for German teens during the Nazi regime.

She quickly got back on topic: "She showed the pope that his lack of being clear was being used to rationalize the death penalty and after that he issued a statement that was much more definitive before he died."

From this exchange it is clear that it was Sister Helen Prejean who gave the copy of the film to the Pope. For the entire article go to SouthamptonPatch

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Comments

[iLdoRight]

03:50 AM on 11/21/2011

What else could she have called him to get the same response? What would have happened if the 'pope" was a Muslim and she called him that?

[Michele Somerville]

04:33 PM on 10/28/2011

Read "Should Susan Sarandon Apologize for Improper Use of the Word "Nazi?"

http://tinyurl.com/34nz4zn

[froggyola]

05:08 AM on 10/28/2011

This pope is an insult to nazis everywhere. He makes them look "kind". Right on Susan Sarandon.

[ThinkCreeps]

04:41 PM on 10/22/2011

ADL wants Sarandon to apologize?

Quite right - there's still a few nazis out there who are feeling legitimately defamed.

[Rozanna]

09:09 AM on 10/22/2011

Pope Ratzinger was a member of Hitler youth\, which means that he was indeed a Nazi. I think it was unfortunate that he was elected Pope. More currently, he has covered up the mistreatment of children by priests. How sad that the church does not love its children enough to protect them.

[Balancement]

08:26 PM on 10/22/2011

They love their Priest and Bishops enough to keep them moving around the world--one step ahead of the law.

[OIF2009]

04:45 PM on 10/27/2011

Nazi youth mind you, he wasnt the high ranking party member that hollywood assumes he was.

[inapickle]

03:44 AM on 10/22/2011

I will grant that I do not personally designate him a Nazi, however, in comman parlance he was one.
He was a member of the Hitler Youth from 1941 and was then in the army of the third reich for two years. He left the army 'as soon as he was able' according to this and other stories- but that was, he admits, in April of 1945 when the Allies were already in Germany and the same month Hitler killed himself. According to the accounts I have read, it was when his unit had 'ceased to exist'- meaning he had no choice. He left the BMW factory (which used Dachau prisoners as slave laborers) anti-aircraft battery he manned and returned to his parents home. the Americans were there and he was taken as a prisoner of war. Was he a member of the Nazi party- no. When people say,' we fought the Nazis in world war II' they are not generally discounting all Germans who were not members of the party. This is not the same as calling a person who has no affilliation with the WWII German military or any present Nazi movements a Nazi. She has a right to her opinion.

[OIF2009]

05:46 PM on 10/27/2011

Yes I agree, she has a right to be a loudmouthed poorly educated idiot. What bugs me is that the ADL has the nerve to ask anyone to apologize. They are frauds!

[iLdoRight]

01:00 AM on 10/22/2011

When it is impossible to be wrong, it is such a heavy burden.

[Balancement]

11:34 PM on 10/21/2011

Certainly there must be a word stronger than "Nazi" to discredit Ratzinger? Being the head of and chief-cover-up officer for a worldwide pedophile ring deserves something more powerfully obscene.

[StevenM]

11:10 AM on 10/22/2011

I was thinking of that just the other day, but drew a blank.

He signs his letters with "BENEDICTUS PP. XVI", maybe PP stands for Pedophile Pimp? It is just as guess, I could be wrong.

[ThinkCreeps]

04:43 PM on 10/22/2011

Ratzinger. Nazi. Protector of child abusers. Oppressor of free thought. Apologist for encouraging the spread of HIV. Friend of holocaust deniers. Thoroughly bad and nasty person.

He'll only be around for a few more years though.

[Balancement]

08:24 PM on 10/22/2011

From your keyboard to the Computer screens of the Goddeses!

[Weirdo]

05:49 PM on 10/21/2011

omg, saying things about the pope is more horrific than what the Catholic church has done and continues to do?

[Djelem]

02:58 PM on 10/21/2011

You go girl!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tellin' it like it is! Did you know he's also a Vampire.........god's truth!

[plansmaker]

12:37 PM on 10/21/2011

Susan Sarandan should do Thelma & Louise II.
Subtitle: Living Over the Canyon's Edge., LOL

[ThinkCreeps]

06:41 PM on 10/21/2011

I'd rather see a remake with Law and Ratzinger doing their own stunts.

[fl2007rn]

11:12 AM on 10/21/2011

Who really cares what these Hollywood Nutjobs think? She needs to go back to Hollywood and make a few more million dollars while complaining about Wall Street and capitalism.

[arabia]

12:02 PM on 10/21/2011

She is an entertainer, not a scholar, so what can one expect? If she wanted to educate herself, she could start with Derek Hastings' book RETINKING THE ROOTS OF NAZISM: RELIGIOUS IDENTITY AND THE EARLY NAZI MOVEMENT IN MUNICH, put out by Oxford University Press. He shows that there were all kinds of competing Catholicisms in Germany in the 1920's and 1930's (as there were competing forms of Lutheranism).

In regard to the pope, he was still considered a minor when the Nazi Youth group "recruited" him for military service, the same age (today) that we hold minors not responsible for "giving into" the overtures of sexual predators. I guess Susan expects more from pope as a young German teenager than she does from our own teens.

[Richbruin]

06:04 PM on 10/21/2011

This is someone desperate for the spotlight as her best days as an actress are far, far behind her. To describe her as an entertainer would be correct if she ever did anything that was entertaining.

[inapickle]

05:12 AM on 10/22/2011

He was 19 by the time the Americans were in Germany (April 1945) and he was captured as a German soldier.

[plansmaker]

12:50 PM on 10/21/2011

Susan Sarandan can sign up on "Thelma & Louise II"
Subtitled: Over the Edge of Grand Canyon.
or She can Call Ayatollah Khomenini a Nazi and see any movie offers?

[Ed McGaa]

10:19 AM on 10/21/2011

This Pope just happens to be the head of a significantly dangerous machine that is more concerned about 'staying in business' rather than Spiritual involvement or true humanitarianism let alone supporting environmental need which the latter is absolutely missing from their Black Book or prophesy. Organized Religion, primarily Catholicism, their missionaries along with the Protestant overzealous nuts as well sucessfully lobbied Congress to BAn oour Sioux Spirituality and beseeching ceremony and furthermore coerced Congress to build a federal Insane Asylum at Canton So Dak primarily to incarcerate medicine people- CHipewa and Sioux. Check the 4th golf course fairway for 140 graves. Yup. O.R. can pay a violent game

[Richbruin]

06:00 PM on 10/21/2011

What makes you think its acceptable to bash the Pope and Catholicism? There are plenty of stereotypes that I can come up with regarding native americans that I'm sure would have you running for a tomahawk to scalp me.....see how that works?

[KYZipster]

06:40 PM on 10/21/2011

The difference is the criticism of the RCC is based in fact.

[mikal haley]

01:07 AM on 10/22/2011

hey!
correct.

[Ed McGaa]

10:08 AM on 10/21/2011

Bout time some honest comments are made regarding this Pope. He has shown his true self by Beatifying the real true 'Nazi' Pope- - Pius Paceli, the war time one,. Congrats Susan! Israel is the only obstruction holding off Sanctification. Pacelli was responsible for Hitler winning Chancellorship through a deal with Pacelli over ruling the German bishops who saw through the Nazi Party after Krystalnacht (Sp?) etc. of the brown shirts. Read Hitlers Pope, Cornwell, Constantine's Sword - Carroll and Under His (Vatican) Windows by a Jewish Author, Zucotti, revealing Pius ignoring German gunshots rounding up 4,000 Jews to be sent to the Auchwitz gas chambers. After wards, Pacelli obtained passage to So. America for Nazi Croats. The Occupation of Italy resulted in a letter to Eisenhower to ban Negro liberating troops to celebrate with the Italian citizenry. Yah- some 'Saint'! -This pope promotes.

[arabia]

12:20 PM on 10/21/2011

"Pacelli was responsibel for Hitler winnning Chancellorship through a deal with Pacelli over ruling the German bishops who saw through the Nazi party after Krystalnacht...."

Recent scholarship notes that the German bishops wanted the Concordat of 1933 signed between the German state and church to safeguard the Catholic Church's "sacramental mission" to its German Catholic people (about 1/3 of Germany in a predominately 2/3 Lutheran country). Kristallnacht happend in 1938, five yrs after the signing of the Concordat between the German state and the Catholic Church. By that time Catholics realized they had been hoodwinked. But to protest after 1939 (when WWII begun) was an act of treason, subject to imprisonment. Pacelli, however, was not so open as you say. He never, for example, would have take to task the Austrian bishops (for their support of Hitler's annexation of Austria) the way he did if he were sympathic to the Nazi cause. He got them all to retract their support. Finally, when Pacelli became pope (during the war), he loathed Nazism for killing millions of Eastern European Catholics and for putting thousands of priests in concentration camps.

History is not as black and white you it seems.

[inapickle]

03:47 AM on 10/22/2011

Interesting. I'l look into this, thanks.

[WESmith]

09:54 AM on 10/21/2011

The lure of Nazism was a promise of Hope. They were told to be proud of their race that had been discriminated against by the European-White race. They were promised jobs, jobs jobs. Foreigners taking the jobs and money of Germans would be ousted from the country. They were promised national healthcare for every one. They were promised a good education for their young. Germany of the 1930s was a destitute country. Their industry had been destroyed. The countries around them controlled their economy and kept them "poor" for the sake of the world. People with very little money and no jobs will rally around anyone that promises them hope.

[OIF2009]

05:01 PM on 10/27/2011

Well said. Americans today cant understand what happened there. Just wait about 10 years and they will get it. Soon even the fast food jobs will be outsourced to the third world and illegals will be the ones delivering the product from port to their doors. Then and only then will they understand why the German people supported Hitler.