During the Holocaust, Jews being taken to the gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps were referred to as “the Muslims,” UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese claimed in an interview with the Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of State Workers (CLATE) published earlier this month.
“In fact, when they were being taken to the gas chambers, there are some accounts of life in the concentration camps saying that Jews were called ‘the Muslims,’” Albanese said.
The term "Muselmann," German for “Muslim,” was used at Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps to refer to prisoners in a state of extreme exhaustion or suffering severe symptoms of starvation, according to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial. The term, whose etymology “has not been definitively explained,” referred to prisoners in this physical state and was not a Nazi racial classification identifying Jews as Muslims.
According to the Memorial, prisoners categorized as Muselmänner often died soon afterward or were chosen to be executed.
Albanese made the assertion that “Jews were called ‘the Muslims’” as part of a broader argument that antisemitism originally encompassed discrimination against the broader category of “Semitic peoples,” rather than Jews specifically.
“When the word ‘antisemitism’ was coined, it referred to anyone who was not European and who came from the Middle East,” Albanese said.
While stating that “Jews were Semites,” she went on to assert that, because they were the “largest such group present in Europe,” the word evolved to “overlap with the concept of anti-Judaism” before later coming to refer specifically to prejudice against Jews.
“So there was a racist hatred of the non-white, of the non-pure, of the non-Christian, which then crystallized into antisemitism as hatred of Jews,” she said.
Albanese subsequently acknowledged that hatred of Jews “as Jews” exists and is “extremely serious,” but added that "it must not be confused with criticism of the State of Israel."
History of the term ‘antisemitism’
Contrary to Albanese’s claim, however, the term “antisemitism” was originally coined specifically to refer to hostility toward Jews.
According to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the term was coined in 1879 by German journalist Wilhelm Marr “to designate anti-Jewish campaigns [and] was spread through use by anti-Jewish political movements and the general public.” The IHRA notes that the term has “since its inception referred to prejudice against Jews alone.”
While the term “Semitic” refers to a group of languages, including Hebrew and Arabic, “antisemitism” has historically referred specifically to hostility toward Jews. Merriam-Webster defines the term as “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group.”
In a post on X/Twitter on Monday, Albanese acknowledged that she had “misread the term ‘Muselmann’” and said this had led her to incorrectly infer that “antisemitism” initially referred to “hatred of all Semitic peoples.”
“In fact it was coined specifically to denote hatred of Jews,” she added.
Still, Albanese has come under scrutiny over allegations of antisemitism and anti-Israel bias numerous times in the past, particularly by the United Nations watchdog UN Watch.
Slamming the rapporteur's comments in the interview, the NGO wrote on X/Twitter, "Even in Nazi death camps: She cannot name Jew-hatred without replacing the Jews."
Yad Vashem: Albanese should 'familiarize herself with the history she seeks to address'
Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust victim memorial institution, also criticized Albanese's remarks, stating in a post on X that she had engaged in "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 institution also criticized Albanese's account of the history of modern antisemitism as historically inaccurate, as well as her use of the term "Muselmann."
"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," Yad Vashem stated.