The UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albania, has apologized after claiming that Jews taken to the Nazi gas chambers were called "the Muslims".

"In fact, when they were taken to the gas chambers, there are some accounts of life in the concentration camps that say Jews were called 'the Muslims,'" Albanese said during an interview.

She made the claim by arguing that anti-Semitism originally included hostility towards "heavenly peoples" in general and not specifically to Jews, saying that the term originally referred to people who were not European and came from the Middle East.

The claim was not true. Mozalman was a nickname in a concentration camp for prisoners who were reduced to extreme hunger, exhaustion and near death. It was not a term that identified Jews as Muslims, and could be applied to prisoners regardless of whether they were Jewish.