The family of legendary children’s author Roald Dahl has issued an apology for comments he made that disparaged Jewish people.
“The Dahl family and the Roald Dahl Story Company deeply apologize for the lasting and understandable hurt caused by some of Roald Dahl’s statements,” reads a post on the Dahl website. “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.”
As the New York Times reports, it’s not clear when the apology was posted on the website, but it was highlighted in a recent article in the British newspaper the Times.
Dahl, best known for popular children’s novels such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach, told the New Statesman in 1983, “There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it’s a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. 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 also self-identified as “anti-Semitic” in a 1990 interview with the Independent.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism reacted to the apology in a statement, saying, “It is a shame that the estate has seen fit merely to apologize for Dahl’s antisemitism rather than to use its substantial means to do anything about it.”
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.