Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson has accepted an invitation to visit Auschwitz after he posted a controversial statement that was widely criticized as anti-Semitic.
From The Depths, an organization that supports Holocaust survivors, will be arranging details of the trip with Jackson, according to ESPN. Jackson was invited by Edward Mosberg, a Holocaust survivor who survived multiple concentration camps and is now an honorary chairman of the organization, when they spoke on Friday.
“We are working with DeSean and his team to set dates for this trip to go ahead and are happy that DeSean agreed,” Jonny Daniels, the founder of From The Depths who set up a Zoom call between Jackson and Mosberg, said in a statement.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland is where more than 1 million people, mostly Jews, died throughout the Holocaust.
Over Independence Day weekend, Jackson’s Twitter posted a quote from the book The Hidden Treasure That Lies in Plain Sight 4: The Day of the Lord and the End of America, which was falsely attributed to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
“Hitler said, ‘because the white Jews knows [sic] that the Negros are the real Children of Israel and to keep Americas secret the Jews will blackmail America,” says the portion of the book that is highlighted in Jackson’s post.
“The[y] will extort America, their plan for world domination won’t work if the Negroes know who they were,” the text continues. “The white citizens of America will be terrified to know that all this time they’ve been mistreating and discriminating and lynching Children of Israel.’”
Jackson, who was criticized and penalized by the team, has apologized.
During his Zoom session with Mosberg, the Eagles player acknowledged that he “never really spent time with anyone from the Jewish community and didn’t know much about their history, this has been such a powerful experience for me to learn and educate myself,” according to the Jerusalem Post.
“I want to take the proper steps to let people know that I never intentionally had any hatred in my heart, I never wanted to put the Jewish community down, I want to educate myself more and help bridge the gaps between all different cultures,” he added.
