Cameroon has apologised to Israel after a minister called Jewish people “arrogant” and implied they brought the Holocaust on themselves.
Deputy justice minister Jean de Dieu Momo appeared to suggest arrested opposition leader Maurice Kamto was leading the Bamileke people to a similar fate.
Speaking during a prime time TV programme on Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV) on Sunday, Mr Momo said: “In Germany, there was a community that was wealthy and wielded all economic power, it was the Jews.
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“They were so arrogant that Germans felt frustrated. Then, one day, a certain Hitler came to power and put them in the gas chambers.”
He added: “Educated people like Mr Kamto need to know where they are leading their people.”
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80,000 shoes line a display case in Auschwitz I. The shoes of those who had been sent to their deaths were transported back to Germany for use of the Third Reich
Hannah Bills
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Barracks for prisoners in the vast Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camp. Here slept as many as four per bunk, translating to around one thousand people per barracks. The barracks were never heated in winter, so the living space of inmates would have been the same temperature as outside.
Hannah Bills
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Hannah Bills
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Sign for the Auschwitz Museum on the snowy streets of Oswiecim, Poland
Hannah Bills
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The Gateway to hell: The Nazi proclamation that work will set you free, displayed on the entrance gate of Auschwitz I
Hannah Bills
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A disused watchtower, surveying a stark tree-lined street through Auschwitz I concentration camp
Hannah Bills
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Stolen property of the Jews: Numerous spectacles, removed from the possession of their owners when they were selected to die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz
Hannah Bills
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A sign bearing a skull and crossbones barks an order to a person to stop beside the once-electrified fences which reinforced the Auschwitz I camp
Hannah Bills
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The peace and the evil: Flower tributes line a section of wall which was used for individual and group executions
Hannah Bills
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Life behind bars: Nazi traps set to hold the Third Reich’s ‘enemies’. In Auschwitz’s years of operation, there were around three hundred successful escapes. A common punishment for an escape attempt was death by starvation
Hannah Bills
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Burying the evidence: Remains of one of the several Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers
Hannah Bills
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Hannah Bills
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The three-way railway track at the entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. This was the first sight the new camp arrivals saw upon completion of their journey. Just beside the tracks, husbands and wives, sons and daughters and brothers and sisters were torn from each other. Most never saw their relatives again
Hannah Bills
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A group of visitors move through the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Viewed from the main entrance watchtower of Auschwitz-Birkenau
Hannah Bills
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“The Final Solution”: The scale of the extermination efforts of the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau can be seen by comparing the scale of the two figures at the far left of the image to the size of the figure to the left of the railway tracks’ three point split
Hannah Bills
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Each cattle car would transport up to one hundred people, who could come from all over Europe, sometimes from as far away as Norway or Greece. Typically, people would have been loaded onto the trucks with around three days food supply. The journey to Auschwitz could sometimes take three weeks.
Hannah Bills
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80,000 shoes line a display case in Auschwitz I. The shoes of those who had been sent to their deaths were transported back to Germany for use of the Third Reich
Hannah Bills
2/16
Barracks for prisoners in the vast Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camp. Here slept as many as four per bunk, translating to around one thousand people per barracks. The barracks were never heated in winter, so the living space of inmates would have been the same temperature as outside.
Hannah Bills
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Hannah Bills
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Sign for the Auschwitz Museum on the snowy streets of Oswiecim, Poland
Hannah Bills
5/16
The Gateway to hell: The Nazi proclamation that work will set you free, displayed on the entrance gate of Auschwitz I
Hannah Bills
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A disused watchtower, surveying a stark tree-lined street through Auschwitz I concentration camp
Hannah Bills
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Stolen property of the Jews: Numerous spectacles, removed from the possession of their owners when they were selected to die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz
Hannah Bills
8/16
A sign bearing a skull and crossbones barks an order to a person to stop beside the once-electrified fences which reinforced the Auschwitz I camp
Hannah Bills
9/16
The peace and the evil: Flower tributes line a section of wall which was used for individual and group executions
Hannah Bills
10/16
Life behind bars: Nazi traps set to hold the Third Reich’s ‘enemies’. In Auschwitz’s years of operation, there were around three hundred successful escapes. A common punishment for an escape attempt was death by starvation
Hannah Bills
11/16
Burying the evidence: Remains of one of the several Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers
Hannah Bills
12/16
Hannah Bills
13/16
The three-way railway track at the entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. This was the first sight the new camp arrivals saw upon completion of their journey. Just beside the tracks, husbands and wives, sons and daughters and brothers and sisters were torn from each other. Most never saw their relatives again
Hannah Bills
14/16
A group of visitors move through the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Viewed from the main entrance watchtower of Auschwitz-Birkenau
Hannah Bills
15/16
“The Final Solution”: The scale of the extermination efforts of the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau can be seen by comparing the scale of the two figures at the far left of the image to the size of the figure to the left of the railway tracks’ three point split
Hannah Bills
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Each cattle car would transport up to one hundred people, who could come from all over Europe, sometimes from as far away as Norway or Greece. Typically, people would have been loaded onto the trucks with around three days food supply. The journey to Auschwitz could sometimes take three weeks.
Hannah Bills
Mr Kamto, a former government minister, was arrested on 28 January along with a number of other opposition figures after claiming he won last year’s election.
He and Mr Momo are both of Bamileke descent.
The Embassy of Israel in Cameroon said it was “deeply shocked” by the “gravely disappointing” antisemitic comments.
“The member of government makes a tacit justification of the holocaust by Nazi Germany,” it said in a statement.
“The embassy strongly condemns these statements, expects an immediate apology and will pay close attention to reparatory steps taken.”
The Cameroon government said it “deplores” the minister’s comments but has not said whether he will face any repercussions.
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