FdI councillor apologizes for 'Holocaust joke'

(ANSA) - ROME, JUN 18 - A newly elected local councillor for Premier Giorgia Meloni's right-wing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party has apologised after being accused of making fun of the Holocaust in a joke about the current high temperatures in Italy.
    In a video that is circulating online, Giuseppe Marasco, a councillor in the southern city of Manfredonia, says "we are used to cremation furnaces" as a political event when someone apologises for taking off their jacket because of the heat.
    Opposition parties said the comments ridiculed the Shoah and called on Meloni to intervene.
    "I absolutely did not intend to link that sentence to the tragedy of the Holocaust, I only intended to refer to the high temperatures in our region," Marasco said. (ANSA).