Chelsea Handler has come under fire after staging a Hitler parody on her E! late-night talk show Chelsea Lately.

Chelsea Handler’s Hitler Parody

Germany’s World Cup victory Sunday has given comedians the chance to use the country’s checkered past – namely during the Holocaust – for joke material. Handler, known for toeing the line on what is or isn’t appropriate, was no exception. For her bit, the comedian had her trusty sidekick Chuy Brava dress up like Adolf Hitler.

The Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman may have let the parody slide, but felt that Handler allowed herself and her comic cohorts to take the gag too far. At one point, one of Handler’s fellow comedians quipped, “I’m a Jew, but I’m still glad Germany won. It’s nice for them to have something gold that they didn’t pry out of my grandfather’s mouth.”

In his statement, Foxman stated, “This Hitler parody in itself was tasteless, but Chelsea Handler’s references to it throughout the program and her connecting it with Germany’s World Cup victory took the joke way overboard.”

“While we try to give comedians leeway and do not believe that Nazi jokes should be completely off-limits, this was an instance of taking a Hitler parody to the extreme,” Foxman continued. “It was tasteless, offensive and hurtful both to Holocaust survivors and their families, and to members of the German team and all Germans.”

“Only play into this trivialization of what happened during the Holocaust,” the ADL director added. “This trend only seems to be getting worse as time passes and as Holocaust survivors and memory of what really happened during World War II dwindles,” he added.

Handler has yet to respond to the ADL’s statement.

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