Doesn’t really matter what he is, but you’d think having a Jewish back ground, he’d know something of the evil he so glibly uttered. His intent, obviously, is to rub salt in an open wound... makes him of the same mindset as Mussolini.
As someone whose family suffered at the hands of the Axis, jokes about Mussolini are, dare I say it, "beyond the Pale".
Visualize the reaction to a light-hearted comment about, say, Simon Legree...