Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos at a party rally in Greece. Photo: www.blogs.lavanguardia.com.

An extreme-right party in Greece is being condemned by Jewish groups for denying the Holocaust on national television. Nikos Michaloliakos, the leader of the Golden Dawn party, said in a TV interview that “there were no gas chambers and ovens [crematoria] in Auschwitz,” a remark that was swiftly condemned by the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KIS).

KIS urged the government to condemn the remarks of Golden Dawn, which won 21 seats in Greece’s May 6 parliamentary elections. “It is an insult to the historical memory, the memory of the 6 million Jews, our brethren, amongst whom there were 70,000 Greek Jews, who perished in the death camps of Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka and the other sites of the extermination factory founded by Adolf Hitler,” KIS said in a statement.