Then national security adviser Henry Kissinger, who is Jewish himself, also said it was no concern of the US if Soviet Jews were gassed, in conversations barely a year before Nixon was forced to quit over the Watergate scandal.
"The Jews have certain traits," Nixon said in a conversation with an adviser in February 1973, which was among 265 hours of recordings released by the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California.
"The Irish have certain ... for example, the Irish can't drink. What you always have to remember with the Irish is they get mean. Virtually every Irish I've known gets mean when he drinks.
"The Italians, of course, those people of course don't have their heads screwed on tight.
"They are wonderful people, but ... " he said before trailing off, in conversations highlighted by the New York Times on Saturday.
Kissinger dismissed calls for Washington to press Soviet authorities to allow Jews to emigrate to escape persecution.
"If they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern."
"I know," Nixon responded. "We can't blow up the world because of it."
Nixon also suggested that many Jews were "deserters" for having moved to Canada to avoid being drafted for the Vietnam war.
"I didn't notice many Jewish names coming back from Vietnam."
"The deserters," he said.
Herald Sun
