It's not a Holocaust reference, though. It was most likely the result of carelessness and a tin ear.
I'm very sensitive to anti-semitism, believe me. When, on another forum, someone I had previously been on friendly terms with started making "cheap Jew" jokes (and he didn't mean anything malicious behind them. It was one of those "everyone knows I'm not an antisemite, so it'll be ok if I say this, even though I'm not Jewish" situations), I felt as though I'd been punched in the stomach. Here, I just rolled my eyes and wondered what they were thinking. (Answer: they weren't.)
An apology isn't uncalled for. Someone should say that they didn't mean it the way it came out, but asked for more that that would be overreacting.