The mayor of a small Austrian village resigned Friday after saying journalists who cover asylum seekers should be “hanged like Jews.”

The conservative mayor Karl Simlinger, who has served as the mayor of the small town of Gföhl since 1997, acknowledged making a statement that “grossly contravenes my convictions and my personal views” and that the last thing he wanted to do was to “injure people.”

The mayor allegedly said during a city council meeting on Tuesday, “I don’t give a sh..t about asylum seekers, but the journalists are to be blamed. They should be hanged; they are like the Jews.”

The Austrian news outlet Heute.at reported on Wednesday that Simlinger denied his statements about hanging Jews and journalists.

The mayor reportedly said that “the asylum discussion took a toll on me” but accused journalists of misrepresenting the events of the discussion.

“I never said the word Jews. I only quoted from Duden. Mr Steindl should be careful because that goes in the direction of defamation,” Simlinger said.

However, two city council representatives said it is inexcusable that the mayor voiced “xenophobia and anti-Semitism.” The Mauthausen Komitees, an organization named after the Mauthausen concentration camp, which provides pedagogical programs to combat anti-Semitism and racism, filed a criminal complaint against Simlinger for inciting hatred, according to AP. The local prosecutor’s office is slated to investigate the complaint.

It is a crime to make anti-Semitic statements in Austria.

(Jacob Kornbluh – YWN)