A senior Brazilian doctor was suspended by the leading Jewish hospital in Latin America for comparing the public’s fear of the coronavirus to the fear that Nazis instilled in Jews during the Holocaust, JTA reported.
Nise Yamaguchi, an oncologist and immunologist at São Paulo’s Albert Einstein Israelite Hospital, said on television on July 5: “Fear is harmful to everything. First, it paralyzes you. It makes you easy to manipulate. Anyone. Do you think that a few Nazi soldiers would be able to control the hungry Jewish herd if they didn’t subject them to that daily humiliation?”
A week and a half later, Yamaguchi was suspended by the hospital where she worked for 35 years, a step that drew considerable media interest in Brazil. Many Brazilians consider the Albert Einstein hospital to be the best in all of Latin America.
President of the hospital Sidney Klajner told the Correio Brasiliense newspaper: “Yamaguchi’s comments were unfortunate and her analogy was inappropiate. The Holocaust was an extremely dire event when six million Jews were killed. Many Holocaust survivors have contributed to our hospital’s foundation.”
Yamaguchi apologized for her comments on Sunday, saying that she didn’t intend her words to be anti-Semitic and expressed appreciation for her late mentor who was Jewish and said that she supported her sister’s conversion to Judaism.
Her suspension was criticized by the Brazil Israel Zionist Association’s president, Felix Soibelman, who said that the decision was a “new inquisition held on behalf of Albert Einstein’s name.”
“Her comments didn’t dishonor or belittle our suffering as Jews at all!” Soibelman asserted. “Quite the contrary, we feel grateful that the memory of our slaughter is being used to awaken the conscience of a people who have succumbed to apathy.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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4 Responses
What’s wrong with what she said? How was it in any way antisemitic? She’s right that the Nazis used fear as a weapon against us and a means to control us.
She’s right sort of. The fear here is worse and it is very destructive.
I can’t see anything wrong with her statement.
The good doctor should probably limit her scope of interests to radiation, because that seems to be a paramount concern In recent years to her native Japan. As far as the odious comparison to the holocaust, maybe she should compare of the COVID19 “fear” to the fear that the depraved Japanese soldiers instilled on their prisoners of war and the Chinese population.