Peruvian President José María Balcázar ignited a firestorm of international condemnation Tuesday after suggesting that Jews bore partial responsibility for driving Germany into World War II.

Speaking at a Chamber of Commerce ceremony in Lima, Balcázar cited a historical text on commerce to argue that Jewish control of German banking and trade had contributed to pushing the nation toward war. He referenced the book “Los enemigos del comercio” by Antonio Escohotado, contending that the work illuminated overlooked historical dynamics that modern observers should understand.

“What role the Jews had in Germany’s national and international trade, how Germany was pushed into a war also partly because of the Jews because they controlled all the banks, all the commerce, and practiced usury,” Balcázar said during remarks delivered to cabinet ministers, diplomats, and business leaders.

The statement invoked classic antisemitic tropes linking Jewish financial influence to geopolitical instability, a narrative that has circulated for centuries and was weaponized extensively by Nazi propagandists to justify genocide.

The Israeli and German embassies responded jointly, characterizing Balcázar’s claims as “absurd, historically untenable, and in violation of the memory of millions of German Jewish citizens murdered by the Nazis.”

The statement reasserted historical fact: that Nazi ideology, not Jewish commercial activity, initiated the war when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, and that the Holocaust claimed six million Jewish lives.

Israeli Ambassador Eran Yuvan and German Chargé d’Affaires David Schmidt formally requested that Balcázar retract his remarks.

Peru’s Jewish Association expressed astonishment at the president’s rhetoric, describing it as a resurrection of “outdated antisemitic theories” divorced from historical reality. The group demanded a public apology from the nation’s chief executive.

Under mounting pressure, the Peruvian presidency issued a statement acknowledging that the president’s words had generated “mistaken perception” regarding Jews and World War II. The statement reaffirmed Peru’s longstanding position that Nazi fanaticism, not Jewish influence, caused the war and the Holocaust. It noted Peru’s historical support for Israeli statehood and reiterated Balcázar’s rejection of antisemitism.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)