Winona Ryder accuses Mel Gibson of calling her an "oven dodger"

17 December 2010

The actress Winona Ryder has claimed that American actor and film director Mel Gibson, 56, made "anti-Semitic and homophobic" remarks long before he was caught on tape making such comments. In the new issue of the men’s magazine GQ, Ryder said that she had earlier called Gibson an anti-Semite, but "No one believed me." Ryder, whose father is Jewish, recalled a Hollywood party in the 1990s: "I remember, like, fifteen years ago, I was at one of those big Hollywood parties. And Mel was really drunk. I was with my friend, who is gay. He made a really horrible gay joke. And somehow it came up that I was Jewish. He said something about 'oven dodgers'” – a term referring to the gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps, in which millions of Jews died.

"I'd never heard that before. It was just this weird,weird moment. I was like, 'He's anti-Semitic and he's homophobic'. No one believed me," Ryder added. The actress said many of her relatives had died in the Holocaust. She was 24 when Gibson allegedly made the comments. In 2006, Gibson was arrested and shouted anti-Semitic epithets at a Jewish traffic officer. The incident was caught on tape. Gibson is said to belong to an ultra-traditionalist Catholic splinter group and has a record of racist outbursts.

WJC and Anti-Semitism