Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, apologized Monday for incorrectly interpreting a term used for starving prisoners in Nazi concentration camps and for wrongly claiming that the word “antisemitism” originally referred to hatred of all Semitic peoples.
The apology followed criticism from the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, which accused Albanese of “clear and dangerous historical revisionism” over comments she made in an interview with the Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of State Workers, or CLATE.
Albanese, an independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor and report on human rights conditions in the Palestinian territories, has been a frequent and outspoken critic of Israel. She has repeatedly accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, an allegation Israel rejects. Her statements and reports have also drawn repeated accusations from Israeli officials and Jewish organizations of anti-Israel bias and antisemitism, allegations she has rejected.
In the interview, published earlier this month, Albanese discussed the German term “Muselmann,” literally “Muslim,” which was used in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps for prisoners suffering from extreme starvation and exhaustion.
“There are accounts of life in the concentration camps saying that Jews were called ‘the Muslims’ when they were being taken to the gas chambers,” Albanese said.
She cited the term as part of a broader argument...
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, apologized Monday for incorrectly interpreting a term used for starving prisoners in Nazi concentration...