KMAX: News of the West

LOS ANGELES (AP) Jewish lawmakers, a Holocaust survivor and black community leaders attacked Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday for admiring comments he reportedly made about Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Holocaust survivor Jona Goldrich said at a news conference that if Schwarzenegger made the remarks, it wouldn't be enough to say he is sorry, as he did Thursday when he apologized for behaving badly with women.

``I ran away from the Nazis at age 14. I lost all my family and all my friends, and in my city of 5,000 people, only 50 survived,'' said Goldrich, 76, of Beverly Hills. ``There is no room for apology, to praise someone who killed 6{ million Jews.''

Although his father was an active Nazi, Schwarzenegger has always distanced himself from that unsavory part of his Austrian background and said he didn't remember making the remarks during the 1975 filming of ``Pumping Iron,'' the bodybuilding documentary that launched his film career. He reportedly said he admired Hitler's rise to power despite being ``a little man with almost no formal education.''

``I don't remember any of those comments because I always despise everything that Hitler stood for,'' Schwarzenegger said Thursday night, calling the Nazi leader a ``disgusting villain.''

Former Democratic Rep. Mel Levine urged voters to reject Schwarzenegger at the ballot box Tuesday, saying the actor had suddenly developed amnesia.

``Anyone who hopes to serve in public life who admired Hitler the most despicable figure in world history in any way, or who holds up Hitler as a role model or a hero, is not fit for public office,'' said Sen. Barbara Boxer, a Democrat.

``Pumping Iron'' director George Butler who quoted Schwarzenegger talking about Hitler in a book proposal said Friday in a statement released by the Schwarzenegger campaign that the remarks were taken out of context and his transcripts may not have been entirely accurate.

Butler told The New York Times on Thursday he stood by a recollection of Schwarzenegger playing Nazi marches and mimicking S.S. officers but said Schwarzenegger was an immature young man involved in the outlandish bodybuilding culture of the 1970s.

In the film, Schwarzenegger never mentions Hitler, but says, ``I was always dreaming about very powerful people, dictators and things like that. I was just always impressed by people who could be remembered for hundreds of years.''

``There's no legitimate way to admire Hitler and those who admire and praise the trappings of dictatorship, if they understand anything about government or history, they understand that dictatorships do terrible things,'' said Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks. ``In admiring dictators and the adrenalin rush that he might get if he was a dictator shows a remarkable unconcern with the victims of dictators.''

Over the years, Schwarzenegger has given generously to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Holocaust memorial group, and he even paid to have it investigate his father's past.

Last year, the center determined that Gustav Schwarzenegger was a volunteer member of the notorious Nazi storm troopers.

``Arnold knows this, and he's not proud of the fact that his father was a member of the Nazi Party and that his father was a member of the SA,'' Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the center, told The Associated Press in August. ``This is a matter of deep embarrassment, but Arnold cannot be judged by his father.''

Executives of the center were in Israel Friday for the Jewish High Holy Days and could not immediately be reached for comment, said center spokeswoman Avra Shapiro. Hier did not immediately return a message left at his Jerusalem hotel, where it was Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.

Schwarzenegger has been criticized for his relationship with former Austrian president Kurt Waldheim, accused of concealing his Nazi past. Schwarzenegger invited Waldheim to his wedding and toasted him when he didn't appear, but aides now say he regrets that and wouldn't have done it if he knew then what is now known about Waldheim.

The latest reports gave his opponents new fodder.

Several protesters chanted ``sieg heil,'' which means ``on to victory'' in German and served as the Nazi rally cry during World War II at one of the candidate's campaign stops Friday. They were quickly surrounded by Schwarzenegger supporters who positioned signs to obscure them.

``I call on him to renounce his comments about Hitler and show his loyalty is to this country,'' said Assemblyman Paul Koretz, D-West Hollywood. ``I'm certainly uncomfortable about this guy. It's more outrageous than anything we have heard about any other politician in this country.''

The Rev. Leonard Jackson, associate pastor of First African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest and largest black congregation in Los Angeles, said his ``checkered background ... is enough to have him recalled from office.''