Alza Schroeder apologized for his father's actions during the Holocaust - and suffered a neo-Nazi attack that called him a "mentally wounded rat" • Schroder: "There were tragedies in our family"

• Alga Schroder // Photo: IP

The apology of a leading German comedian for war crimes committed by his father during World War II caused a wave of attacks against him on social networks by neo-Nazis.

Ezeh Schroder, 54, was interviewed last week on a popular hospitality program alongside Holocaust survivor Eva Shepsi. With tears in his eyes, Schroeder told her survivor that his father had been drafted into the Nazi army in 1941 and served for four years. "He did horrible things as a soldier. He told me about them later," Schroeder said his father died nine years ago at the age of 87.

Immediately after the broadcast, radical right wingers launched an attack against Schroeder on social networks. Among other things, abusive nicknames such as "a mentally damaged rat" and "an embarrassing slave and repulsive slave to the system" were cited, the German RND news site reported.

On the other hand, Schroeder's supporters have also taken to social networks to express support for a comedian. They noted that Schroder's appeal to Schepsi was done spontaneously, after telling the talk show about her memories of Auschwitz, as part of a special 75-year anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Shepsi arrived accompanied by her daughter, Anita Schwartz.

Schroeder, who seems to have been moved by Shepsi's testimony, said his father "would probably have apologized if he was sitting here." He then got up, reached out to her survivor and said, "I'm sorry. We must not forget."

Schroder told the guests of the program that "there were many tragedies in our family that were swept under the rug." Some of his relatives, including his grandmother and several uncles, committed suicide after the surrender of Nazi Germany.

Shepsi then told the German media that Schroder's gesture was "extremely unusual" to her.

The day after the broadcast, Schroeder told the newspaper in the boy that his father was a tank driver in the Wehrmacht and did not belong to a political party. He was captured by Red Army soldiers before the war ended and was imprisoned for six years in a Soviet prison camp, where he was forced to work in forced labor in the mines. Schroeder added that his apology was in the name of his father for the war crimes committed by the Wehrmacht soldiers.