Israel demands apology after Russia says Hitler had Jewish roots

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

Israel has lambasted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for claiming Adolf Hitler had Jewish origins, saying it was an “unforgivable” falsehood that debased the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust.

Leaders from several Western nations denounced the foreign minister’s comments and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russia of having forgotten the lessons of World War II.

In a sign of sharply deteriorating relations with Moscow, the Israeli foreign ministry summoned the Russian ambassador and demanded an apology.

Such lies are intended to accuse the Jews themselves of the most horrific crimes in history that were committed against them,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement.

Lavrov made the assertion on Italian television on Sunday when he was asked why Russia said it needed to “denazify” Ukraine if the country’s own president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, was himself Jewish.

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken weighed in later on the comments by his Russian counterpart saying it was “incumbent on the world to speak out against such vile, dangerous rhetoric.”

The German government’s anti-Semitism commissioner, Felix Klein, said Lavrov’s remarks mocked the victims of Nazism and “shamelessly confront not only Jews but the entire international public with open anti-Semitism.”