BREAKING NEWS

Germany condemns Greek cartoon depicting its finance minister as a Nazi

Germany condemned on Friday a cartoon published in a Greek leftist newspaper close to the new ruling party in Athens that depicts Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble in a Nazi uniform making comments that invoke the Holocaust.
In the cartoon, carried in the daily Avgi (The Dawn), mouthpiece of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' Syriza party, Schaeuble says "we insist on soap from your fat" and "we are discussing fertilizer from your ashes", references to the fate of Jews in the Nazi death camps of World War Two.
"I always uphold the principle of free speech but on a very personal level I find this caricature offensive and the cartoonist should be ashamed," German finance ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger told a regular news conference.
Relations between Germany, Europe's paymaster, and debt-ridden Greece have become particularly strained since the Jan. 25 election that swept the anti-austerity Syriza to power.