Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld courts controversy by invoking Holocaust in criticism of Angela Merkel’s refugee policy
Lagerfeld said he was going to ‘say something horrific’ before criticising the chancellor for the ‘huge error’ of accepting so many refugees
Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld has sparked outrage by evoking the Holocaust as he attacked German Chancellor Angela Merkel for opening the country’s borders to migrants.
“One cannot – even if there are decades between them – kill millions of Jews so you can bring millions of their worst enemies in their place,” he told a French television show.
“I know someone in Germany who took a young Syrian and after four days said, ‘The greatest thing Germany invented was the Holocaust,’” he added.
Several hundred people lodged official complaints about Lagerfeld’s comments, the French media regulator said on Monday after he appeared on the “Salut les terriens!” (Hello Earthlings!) talk show on the C8 channel on Saturday.
One cannot – even if there are decades between them – kill millions of Jews so you can bring millions of their worst enemies in their place
The veteran Chanel designer, who was born in Hamburg just as Adolf Hitler came to power, had earlier lambasted Merkel for taking more than 1 million asylum seekers since the migrant crisis of 2015.