“Imagine if the Gestapo had consisted of Argentines. Wouldn’t that have been much better?” said the designated Education Minister, the favorite in the October 22 election, Martín Krause, at an event at the University of Torcuato Di Tella. “Instead of murdering six million Jews, it would have been much fewer. There would have been bribery, any kind of inefficiency, they would have been sleeping. But that didn’t exist, they were just Germans. That was the problem.” With his statement, Krause apparently wanted to point out the supposed inefficiency of the Argentine authorities.

The Association of Jewish Communities in Argentina (DAIA) expressed sharp criticism. “We condemn Martín Krause’s trivialization of the Holocaust,” the group wrote in a statement on Friday. “We warn the presidential candidate against the inappropriate use of the Shoah in the public debate and insist that the memory of the six million murdered must not be tarnished.” The Jewish community in Buenos Aires is one of the largest outside Israel.

Elections at the end of October

Conservative presidential candidate Patricia Bullrich also condemned the comments. “Javier Milei cannot propose someone like that to be responsible for the education of our children. He’s a barbarian,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Krause later asked for forgiveness. He wanted to point out deficits in the education system and chose an inappropriate comparison.

On October 22nd, Argentines will elect a new head of state. The right-wing populist Milei surprisingly emerged as the favorite in the primaries, followed by the conservative former Interior Minister Bullrich and the Economics Minister Sergio Massa from the left-wing government camp.