Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov angered Germany and Israel after suggesting that the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had Jewish origins.
During an interview with Italy’s Rete 4 channel, Lavrov was asked how Russia could say it needed to “denazify” Ukraine, when the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, was Jewish.
“When they say ‘What sort of nazification is this if we are Jews’, well I think that Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it means nothing,” Lavrov said, speaking through an Italian interpreter.
“For a long time now we’ve been hearing the wise Jewish people say that the biggest anti-Semites are the Jews themselves,” he added.
Foreign Minister Lavrov’s remarks are both an unforgivable and outrageous statement as well as a terrible historical error. Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust. The lowest level of racism against Jews is to accuse Jews themselves of antisemitism.
— יאיר לפיד – Yair Lapid (@yairlapid) May 2, 2022
– Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s comments to Italian television in which he suggested that Adolf Hitler had Jewish origins are “absurd” propaganda, a German government spokesperson said.
Israeli Foreign Ministry Yair Lapid said the Russian ambassador would be summoned for “a tough talk” over the assertion, which Lavrov made on Sunday in an interview with Italian television.
“It is an unforgivable, scandalous statement, a terrible historical mistake, and we expect an apology,” Lapid told the YNet news website.
There was no immediate comment from the Russian embassy.
