Top German economist apologises for offending Jews

Hans-Werner Sinn, president of the Munich-based Ifo economic research institute, sparked outrage especially within the Jewish community with his comments which were published on Sunday."I apologize to the Jewish community and withdraw the comparison," Sinn wrote in a letter to the President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch.More than 60 years after World War Two, comments seen as qualifying the horror of the Holocaust, in which the Nazis killed 6 million Jews, are still unacceptable in Germany."Even in the global economic crisis of 1929, no one wanted to believe in an anonymous system failure. Then it hit Jews in Germany, today it is managers," Sinn had told Tagesspiegel daily.The Council of Jews had swiftly demanded an apology and described the comparison as "outrageous, absurd and misplaced".