Merkel slams far-right leader’s ‘shameful’ Nazi remark

BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday condemns as “shameful” remarks by a leader of Germany’s far-right AfD party likening the Nazi era to a mere “speck of bird shit” in the country’s long history.

“It is shameful that we have to respond to such comments made by a member of the German Bundestag (lower house of parliament),” Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert tells reporters in Berlin.

“The government completely and unequivocally rejects any relativisation, any downplaying of the Nazi crimes,” Seibert says, describing Hitler’s regime and the Holocaust as “a singular crime against humanity.”

It was only because Germans acknowledged their “everlasting responsibility” for the “immense suffering” caused, he adds, that the country has been able to once again become a “good partner to other nations.”

Seibert is reacting to comments made at the weekend by AfD co-leader Alexander Gauland, who told members of the party’s youth wing that there was more to the country’s history than the 12 years of the Nazi regime.

— AFP