- (AFP) - A week before the United States release of Mel
Gibson's controversial movie, The Passion of the Christ, the filmmaker's
father has repeated claims the Holocaust was exaggerated.
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- Hutton Gibson's comments, made in a telephone interview
with New York radio talk show host Steve Feuerstein, come at an awkward
time for the actor-director who has been trying to deflect criticism from
Jewish groups that his film might inflame anti-Semitic sentiment.
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- In his interview on WSNR radio's Speak Your Piece, to
be broadcast on Monday, Hutton Gibson, argued that many European Jews counted
as death camp victims of the Nazi regime had in fact fled to countries
like Australia and the United States.
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- "It's all - maybe not all fiction - but most of
it is," he said, adding that the gas chambers and crematoria at camps
like Auschwitz would not have been capable of exterminating so many people.
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- "Do you know what it takes to get rid of a dead
body? To cremate it?" he said. "It takes a litre of petrol and
20 minutes. Now, six million of them? They (the Germans) did not have the
gas to do it. That's why they lost the war."
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- Gibson's father caused a furore last year when he made
similar remarks in a New York Times article.
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- In a television interview with Diane Sawyer this week,
Mel Gibson accused the Times of taking advantage of his father, and he
warned Sawyer against broaching the subject again.
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- "He's my father. Gotta leave it alone Diane. Gotta
leave it alone," Gibson said, while offering his own perspective on
the Holocaust.
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- "Do I believe that there were concentration camps
where defenceless and innocent Jews died cruelly under the Nazi regime?
Of course I do; absolutely," he said. "It was an atrocity of
monumental proportion."
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- During his lengthy radio interview, Hutton Gibson, 85,
said Jews were out to create "one world religion and one world government"
and outlined a conspiracy theory involving Jewish bankers, the US Federal
Reserve and the Vatican, among others.
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- The Passion, which gets its US release on February 25,
purports to be a faithful and graphic account of Christ's last 12 hours
on earth.
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- Jewish leaders who have attended advance screenings have
voiced concerns that its portrayal of the Jews' role in Christ's execution
could stir up anti-Semitic feeling.
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- Agence France-Presse
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- http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8727351%255E1702,00.html
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