Dr Ric Gordon says there were no overweight people in concentration camps on the Today Show whilst discussing Australians being overweight. Courtesy Channel Nine/Today Show

IT WAS the live-to-air comment that left Karl Stefanovic and Today show viewers gobsmacked.

Now, a prominent group has called for an apology for the “shockingly insensitive” remark.

The breakfast show’s go-to medical commentator Dr Ric Gordon made a strange comment during a segment about Australia’s weight problem. He said Australians needed to eat less food, just like people in concentration camps.

“As something controversial — there were no overweight people in the concentration camps. Now, they weren’t exercising a lot, they just weren’t eating,” Dr Gordon said.

“Now I’m not going any further with that except to say what you put in your mouth ends up on your hips,” he said.

The chairman of Jewish group the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission said he was “outraged and alarmed” by the comments.

“It’s clear that we have reached a new low in the abuse and perversion of the Holocaust,” Dr Dvir Abramovich said in a statement to news.com.au.

“This distasteful and shockingly insensitive concentration camp analogy, used by Dr Ric Gordon to promote healthier eating among Australians, reveals a troubling and basic ignorance about the horrific facts and crimes of the Holocaust.

“To employ the unspeakable tragedy of the death camps, where millions of people starved to death and were tortured and murdered in the gas chambers, as a way to bring attention to the importance of weight loss, trivialises and debases the memory of the Holocaust and diminishes the evil deeds of the Nazis.

“It is also a horrible insult and slap in the face to the memory of those who perished at the hands of the Nazis and those who survived the atrocities.”

Dr Gordon’s comments came during a conversation with Stefanovic about the need for Australian adults to eat less and move more.

“We’ve got to start weighing people. We’ve got to get them more active, and we’ve got to teach them about sugar,” Dr Gordon began. “It’s what you eat that’s important.”

Then things got awkward.

When host Karl Stefanovic asked him what people should eat, Dr Gordon said: “As something controversial — there were no overweight people in the concentration camps. Now, they weren’t exercising a lot, they just weren’t eating.

“Now I’m not going any further with that except to say what you put in your mouth ends up on your hips,” he said.

Stefanovic paused, unable to find the right words to react.

“Righto,” he eventually said. “He said it, not me.” Stefanovic’s co-host Lisa Wilkinson replied, “Thank you, Karl … moving on.”

Dr Abramovich has called for an apology from Dr Gordon, one of Australia’s leading IVF specialists, who works at Sydney’s North Shore Specialist Day Hospital.

“We call on Dr Gordon to immediately apologise, and would urge the Today show to invite a Holocaust survivor to educate current and future generations about the unimaginable conditions and suffering they underwent at the hands of the Third Reich,” Dr Abramovich said.

“There is simply no place in our public discourse for such offensive equations, and people in the media must refrain from using such inappropriate and hurtful comparisons in the future.”

In 2009, Kyle Sandilands was suspended from his role as breakfast host at 2DayFM after he made a concentration camp joke about actor and comedian Magda Szubanski.

Szubanski was a spokeswoman for Jenny Craig at the time. Her family is of Polish origin, a country where many of the worst Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, were located.

Sandilands joked that Szubanski’s work with the weight loss brand was not finished.

“Magda could have another run out of it,” he said on 2Day FM. “She could get another season out of them, easy ... she’s not skinny.”

Jackie O suggested Szubanski might not be able to lose any more weight due to her build.

“That’s what all fat people say,” Sandilands replied. “You put her in a concentration camp and you watch the weight fall, like she could be skinny.”

At the time Szubanski brushed off Sandilands’ on-air comments, but said they were offensive to those who had suffered in concentration camps.

“I couldn’t give two hoots about what Kyle says about me, but to trivialise what happened to people in concentration camps is abhorrent,” she said in a statement.

Sandilands now hosts the breakfast show with Jackie O on KIIS FM.