(JTA) – Lorenzo Dechalus, a well-known rapper whose stage name is Lord Jamar, said that at most only 500,000 Jews died in the Holocaust. Dechalus, a New York City-born producer and former cast member of the television show “Oz,” made the comment during an with Rizza Islam, a member of the Nation of Islam. “Check the records: There wasn’t even six million Jews in Europe at that time,” Dechalus, 52, said. “There was about 500,000 over there, in Germany, in Europe, there was no six million, so what are we talking about? Stop it.” The video is available on Facebook, which in October said it would ban Holocaust denial from its platform. Britain’s Campaign Against Antisemitism group wrote about it Sunday.
Dechalus added: “I’m not saying they didn’t do some of the horrific things that they did but it wasn’t to the scale that they’re saying it was done.” Islam reacted by saying: “That’s a fact.” He also said that Adolf Hitler “was a horrible dude” but “he learned how to use a system of eugenics and sterilization through the vaccines and other things of that nature from California, from America.” In the video, Dechalus and Islam several times described a “clash” between Blacks, whom they called “our people,” and “the enemy.” Rizza also repeated as fact a discredited theory that vaccines cause autism.
According to the Israeli Holocaust museum Yad Vashem, during the 1942 Wannsee Conference a high Nazi official referred to 11 million Jews that would be targeted by Nazi Germany.
Main Photo: Lorenzo Dechalus, aka Lord Jamar, attends the YO! MTV Raps 30th Anniversary Live Event at Barclays Center in New York City on June 1, 2018. (Johnny Nunez/WireImage)