‘Hitler had Jewish blood’: Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Sunday that the fact Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish does not negate his country’s Nazi elements, claiming that Nazi Germany’s leader Adolf Hitler also “had Jewish blood.”

Lavrov was asked about Russia’s claim that it had invaded Ukraine to “denazify” the country, which has a democratically-elected Jewish president.

“So when they say ‘How can Nazification exist if we’re Jewish?’ In my opinion, Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it doesn’t mean absolutely anything,” he told the station in Russian, referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s religion, according to the Associated Press.

“For some time we have heard from the Jewish people that the biggest antisemites were Jewish.”

The backlash was swift, with officials in both Israel and Ukraine slamming Lavrov’s remarks as deeply offensive and historically inaccurate.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said: “Such lies are meant to blame the Jews themselves for the most terrible crimes in history and thus free the oppressors of the Jews from their responsibility.

“No war today is the Holocaust or is like the Holocaust.”

Israeli foreign minister Yair Lapid reacted angrily, calling Mr Lavrov’s words “unforgivable”.

Zelenskiy, in his nightly video message, noted Moscow has been silent since Lavrov’s comments. “This means that the Russian leadership has forgotten all the lessons of World War Two,” he said. “Or perhaps they have never learned those lessons.”

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken weighed in later on the comments by his Russian counterpart saying it was “incumbent on the world to speak out against such vile, dangerous rhetoric.”

There have for decades been unproven claims that Hitler’s unidentified paternal grandfather was Jewish, fuelled by an assertion by Hitler’s lawyer Hans Frank, according to an article by the BBC.

In his memoir, published in 1953, Frank said he had been instructed by Hitler to investigate rumours that he had Jewish ancestry. Frank said he uncovered evidence that Hitler’s grandfather was indeed Jewish – though the claim, which has gained ground among conspiracy theorists, has been treated with scepticism by mainstream historians,