UN official entangled with Jewish Holocaust and becomes a joke: "For God's sake, go"

Francesca Albanese, a senior UN official, misinterpreted the term "Muselmann," which referred to prisoners in concentration camps, claiming it meant Muslims. Following the error, she faced international condemnation and ridicule, including calls for her resignation.

Francesca Albanese, a senior UN official, became embroiled in a media controversy after incorrectly interpreting the term "Muselmann" (Muselmann), a word that described Nazi concentration camp prisoners on the verge of death, claiming it referred to "Muslims." The mistake sparked a wave of international condemnation and ridicule. Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken denounced her as "pro-Russian and anti-Semitic" and called for the revocation of her honorary doctorates. Italian Senator Raffaella Paita criticized her attempt to downplay the role of Jews as Holocaust victims. UN Watch reported that Albanese issued a rare apology, but it only intensified the criticism. In her apology, she wrote: "I misread the term 'Muselmann,' which was used in Nazi camps to describe prisoners on the verge of death, and from that I mistakenly concluded that the term anti-Semitism originally referred to hatred of all Semitic peoples." Hillel Neuer, CEO of UN Watch, rejected the apology and called for her resignation: "For God's sake, go." Other figures, including Philip Piatov from Bild, François Camus from Charlie Hebdo, writer Gad Saad, and even pro-Palestinian voices like John Aziz and Ihab Hassan, condemned her. According to the article, hours after the apology, Albanese returned to her usual style and supported a post by Magen, thus retracting her apology.