(JTA) — A mayor in Austria resigned after saying journalists and Jews should be hanged.
Karl Simlinger, who led the village of Gfohl, which is 43 miles northwest of Vienna, resigned Friday, the news agency Novum reported.
Simlinger made the statement on Tuesday night during a town hall meeting, according to the news site tips.at.
“I don’t give a shit about asylum seekers, but the journalists are at fault. They should be hanged; they are like the Jews,” he was quoted as saying.
Simlinger at first denied making the comment before releasing a statement on Friday in which he confirmed making it.
“It wholly runs contrary to my worldview,” he wrote in the statement, in which he said he would resign. “It was not my intention to cause offense and I apologize unreservedly.”
On Thursday, Willi Mernyi, the chairman of the Mauthausen Committee, a nongovernmental agency devoted to Holocaust commemoration, said he had petitioned the Austrian federal prosecutor’s office to prosecute Simlinger for alleged violation of Austria’s laws against racial hate speech, the OTS news agency reported.
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