Fears over Mel Gibson's Holocaust film By Hugh Davies
Mel Gibson, whose film The Passion of the Christ was attacked by Jewish leaders as anti-Semitic, is to make a film about the Holocaust.
The project, being developed as a television mini-series, is likely to attract even more flak, as his father, Hutton, has repeatedly denied that the Holocaust happened.
The actor spent £14 million producing the film on the last days of Christ, making a worldwide gross profit of £351 million, mainly because of the controversy it attracted.
It made more than £2 million within three days of opening in Britain, despite being in Aramaic, Hebrew and Latin. Many screenings were sold out, with churches taking block bookings.
Gibson, a Catholic, was criticised for allegedly portraying "Jewish authorities as the ones responsible for the decision to crucify Christ".
He said he had no wish to offend Jews, but added: "Anybody who transgresses has to look at their own part or look at their own culpability."
ABC is using his company, Con Artists Productions, to make the love story of Flory Van Beek, a Dutch Jew whose gentile neighbours hid her from the Nazis. The film is based on her book Survival in the Valley of Death.
Gibson's father said accounts of the Holocaust were mostly "fiction" and there were more Jews in Europe after the Second World War than before.
Holocaust scholars criticise Gibson for failing to disassociate himself clearly from these views. Rafael Medoff, who runs a Holocaust studies institute in Pennsylvania, said the new film was "cause for concern".
27 February 2004: British Jews condemn 'dangerous' Passion