New York, NY, November 9, 2011 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today derided as "cynical and perverse" a movie that unequivocally compares the murder of millions of Jews and others in the Holocaust to women having abortions in the United States, calling the film "one of the most offensive and outrageous abuses of the memory of the Holocaust we have seen in years."
The film has recently been disseminated to voters in an effort to support pro-life amendments in state legislatures. The movie "180," which is available on YouTube and elsewhere, shows graphic images of dead bodies piled up in concentration camps as well as Jews being shot in mass graves. The narrator, Ray Comfort, is shown interviewing young people in an effort to convince them that there is absolute moral equivalency between the murder of 11 million people in the Nazi Holocaust and abortion.
"The film is a perverse attempt to make a case against abortion in America through the cynical abuse of the memory of those killed in the Holocaust," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director and a Holocaust survivor. "Not only does the film try to assert a moral equivalency between the Holocaust and abortion, but it also brings Jews and Jewish history into the discussion and then calls on its viewers to repent and accept Jesus as their savior. It is, quite frankly, one of the most offensive and outrageous abuses of the memory of the Holocaust we have seen in years."
The film "180" is part of an initiative led by "Living Waters," which has spearheaded "Project Heart Changer," which aims to change peoples' minds about abortion and get them to accept Jesus as their savior.
Personhood USA, an anti-abortion group, claims that it e-mailed the video to 600,000 voters in Mississippi in an effort to convince them to vote in favor of a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would have defined the word "person" to include every human being "from the moment of fertilization, cloning or functional equivalent thereof." The measure was defeated by voters in Tuesday's election.
"The creators of the film clearly don't get it," said Mr. Foxman. "No Christian who understands Jewish suffering should resort to inappropriate comparisons to the Holocaust to send a message that abortion is wrong. This was one of the most painful chapters in human history. Must the memory of the 6 million and millions of other victims be continually misused and abused by those with another agenda?"
In the film, Comfort manipulates the young people interviewed to view the killing of innocent Jews during the Holocaust to be the same as the killing of fetuses. First, he asks the young people whether they would agree to bulldoze innocent Jews into a mass grave and bury them alive it would save their own lives. Then he asks questions about abortion. He tells the young people who answered 'no' to the first question that they have just said that they would not kill innocent Jews, but they think it is okay to kill innocent babies.
"We're talking about a Holocaust in America, in our country, that's sanctioned by the government," Comfort says. He goes on to claim that American people allowing abortions is doing exactly what the Germans did, that Hitler had the sanction of the German people to kill Jews.