UN’s Albanese walks back claims that Nazis labeled death camp victims ‘Muslims,’ that antisemitism isn’t only about Jews

The UN special rapporteur for the Palestinians, Francesca Albanese, apologizes for claiming that the Nazis called their death camp victims “Muslims” and that antisemitism is not only about hatred of Jews.

Albanese said last week in an interview that antisemitism “is not just discrimination against Jews. It’s discrimination against Semitic peoples,” and claimed that, when the term was coined in the late 19th century, it referred to all non-Europeans.

“The concept of antisemitism is broader. In fact, when they were taken to the gas chambers, there are some testimonies about life in the concentration camps that state: ‘They were called Muslims, Jews,'” she said.

Holocaust Distortion from U.N. “Expert”: Francesca Albanese claims Jews in Nazi death camps “were called Muslims.” Antisemitism targets “Semitic peoples” and “not just discrimination against Jews.”

Even in Nazi death camps: She cannot name Jew-hatred without replacing the Jews. pic.twitter.com/ipSMTOK0Vu

— UN Watch (@UNWatch) September 24, 2026

Albanese issues a statement apologizing, saying she misunderstood a German term, “Muselmann” — a term used by the Nazis to refer to the most emaciated of concentration camp prisoners — and had been “wrongly inferring that the term antisemitism originally meant hatred of all Semitic peoples.”

“In fact it was coined specifically to denote hatred of Jews,” she says.

I sincerely apologize.
I misread the term "Muselmann" (Muslim) used in Nazi camps for prisoners at the brink of death, wrongly inferring that the term antisemitism originally meant hatred of all Semitic peoples. In fact it was coined specifically to denote hatred of Jews.

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) September 28, 2026

Yad Vashem, in response to Albanese’s original remarks, says the UN rapporteur “ventures into obvious and dangerous historical revisionism with her attempt to recast the Nazi persecution and murder of Jews as merely part of a broader hatred of the ‘non-white,’ non European or ‘non-Christian.'”

“The Special Rapporteur would do well to familiarize herself with the history she seeks to address, particularly the rise of Nazi antisemitism and the ideology that paved the way for the Holocaust, before making assertions about it,” the statement adds.

Albanese regularly makes extreme comments about Israel and other topics. Today’s statement marks a rare apology and retraction.

Anti-Zionist activists sometimes argue that Palestinians are Semitic, so they therefore cannot be antisemitic.

The Nazis assured their Arab allies during World War II that Arabs and Muslims were not considered “Semites” and that their ideology was specifically anti-Jewish.