KYLE Sandilands has been suspended by his radio station for making a concentration camp quip about Magda Szubanski.
The shock jock said on air yesterday that Szubanski, who has publicly battled to shed weight, would lose more “in a concentration camp”.
Szubanski, whose father was a Polish freedom fighter who hunted down Nazis, said Sandilands’ remarks were “abhorrent”.
In a statement released this morning, Sydney station 2Day FM said the comments were “unacceptable” and apologised for any offence caused.
“2Day FM has suspended Kyle Sandilands following comments he made during The Kyle and Jackie O Show on Tuesday 8 September, 2009,” the statement read.
“The suspension will be in effect pending further discussions involving Kyle Sandilands and station management.
“2Day FM believes the comments made by Kyle were unacceptable and sincerely apologises and regrets any offence they caused.”
This morning, furious soul singer Renee Geyer slammed Kyle Sandilands while recalling her own family’s Holocaust past.
Geyer, who lost her grandparents to German gas chambers, broke down in tears today and said there was no excuse for belittling the horrors of the Nazi regime.
“My mother was in Auschwitz, her parents were gassed there and she was about 15 years old and from Auschwitz they moved her to Mauthausen,” she told 3AW.
“She was in concentration camps for about two years, she lost her family and yes everybody was very skinny, they were like skeletons.”
Premier John Brumby also slammed Sandilands, labeling his comments “completely inappropriate and completely insensitive”.
He said to make those comments, even unknowingly, about someone whose family migrated to Australia from Poland was wrong.
“To make those comments in relation to someone whose family had to escape from tyranny, escape from the holocaust, escape from prison camps, it’s just a terrible thing to say, completely insensitive,” he said.
“Having said that he’s done the right thing to apologise.”
Sandilands has dismissed the jibe as “just one of those things”.
Today he went on air saying he did not mean “to offend her (Szubanski) or anyone else with those comments”.
He then said he was trying to contact the actress and it was “just one of those things” – an echo of comments last month from Jackie O, who dismissed the pair’s earlier lie detector controversy as “just one one of those moments when live radio happens”.
Sandilands’ jibe – which follows his radio debacle involving a 14-year-old rape victim – angered Jewish leaders, who called last night for his sacking.
“Why would you want to have anything to do with somebody like this?” said Australian/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council spokesman Jeremy Jones.
“To joke about the experience of people who are being starved to death or murdered . . . is quite horrendous.
“There are people who confuse freedom of speech with gratuitous, insulting, offensive behaviour. They’re two quite different things.”
Szubanski, whose father was a Polish freedom fighter who hunted down Nazis, said Sandilands’ remarks were “abhorrent”.
“I couldn’t give two hoots about what Kyle says about me, but to trivialise what happened to people in concentration camps is abhorrent,” said the TV star, who recently lost 25kg in her battle with obesity.
Sandilands recently returned to the airwaves in Sydney after the rape victim scandal. A weeknight package of highlights was dumped from Fox FM in Melbourne.
He faces the wrath of listeners a second time after laying into Szubanski over her role as the public face of weight-loss firm Jenny Craig.
Sandilands joked that her work wasn’t finished.
“She could get another season out of them, easy . . . she’s not skinny,” he said on 2Day FM.
Co-host Jackie O suggested Szubanski might not be able to lose any more weight due to her build.
“That’s what all fat people say,” Sandilands replied.
“You put her in a concentration camp and you watch the weight fall, like, she could be skinny.”
Szubanski has spoken publicly about the persecution of Jews in World War II.
Her father was a resistance fighter who was captured by the Germans before escaping.
Szubanski has told how her grandparents hid a Jewish woman and a young boy but had to stop helping them after neighbours threatened to report them.
Her father was a reluctant hero and refused any honours because of his guilt over killing people, she once said.
“He was part of a crack unit to protect the Polish HQ and he assassinated various people who were collaborators, the ones who persecuted people who helped the Jews,” she said.
Szubanski once recalled that a Polish woman who came to her father’s funeral said: “You realise that only the bravest of the brave were able to do what your father did.”
Radio network boss Peter Harvie recently admitted he rarely listened to Sandilands.
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Blahblahblah. There should be a camper’s gasbottle explosion near Oswiecziem (Auschwitz), bc now its all over in the world the facts that there was NO gassing in any “concentration camps”. The Zyklon-B gas would leave residues in the walls, paints, bricks. The early ’90s cemical exams revealed that the Zyklon-B residues in Auschwitz, Dachau, mauthausen = o. I mean 0%. Another big jiddish lie.
Those who claim their realtives were gassed either:
1. liars,
2. brainwashed by zionist jews that their relatives (today living in israel or in USA) were ‘gassed’.
There were several cases when jews visited certain countries and the ‘holohoax memorials’, found their NAMES on the horrible ugly monumenst clamiming them as gassed and died.
Why is it always about the Jew? What about the vast number of concentration camps throughout the last century that didn’t involve Jews. I am so sick of these people.