Roald Dahl’s family apologizes for the “lasting and understandable hurt” caused by the author’s anti-Semitic comments

The family of Roald Dahl has apologized for the “the lasting and understandable hurt” caused by the classic children’s book author’s anti-Semitic comments that ranged over decades.  

It was not immediately clear when the statement from the author’s family was issued on his official website, according to multiple reports. However, the British newspaper the Sunday Times reported the statement Sunday. 

“Those prejudiced remarks are incomprehensible to us and stand in marked contrast to the man we knew and to the values at the heart of Roald Dahl’s stories, which have positively impacted young people for generations,” the statement said.

“We hope that, just as he did at his best, at his absolute worst, Roald Dahl can help remind us of the lasting impact of words,” it continued. 

Dahl is the author of “Matilda,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “The BFG,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and more.

He made multiple public anti-Semitic remarks before dying in 1990 at the age of 74.

Dahl told The New Statesman in a 1983 interview that “There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity.”

“I mean, there’s always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason,” he added, in addition to other anti-Semitic comments.

In 1990, he told The Independent that “I’m certainly anti-Israel and I’ve become antisemitic inasmuch as that you get a Jewish person in another country like England strongly supporting Zionism.” 

Following the author’s death Abraham Foxman, the then-national director of the Anti-Defamation League in the United States, called the author a “blatant and admitted anti-Semite” in a letter to The New York Times.

Foxman noted at the time that the author had previously referred to “those powerful American Jewish bankers” and said the U.S. government was “utterly dominated by the great Jewish financial institutions over there.”

Dahl’s work has also faced a slate of other criticisms, including initially depicting the Oompa Loopa workers in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory as African pygmies. The characters were later recast as fictional beings from Loompaland, according to The New York Times.