Brazil’s far-right president has claimed there is “no doubt” Nazism was a leftist movement, hours after visiting a Holocaust memorial in Israel.

Jair Bolsonaro’s remarks directly contradicted information on the Yad Vashem remembrance centre’s website, which explains how Germany’s Nazi movement emerged from radical right-wing groups responding to the rise of communism.

In televised comments, the Brazilian president echoed previous remarks by his country’s foreign minister, Ernesto Araujo, who had also claimed the Nazis were leftists.

Asked by reporters if he agreed, Mr Bolsonaro replied: “There is no doubt, right?”

He went on to suggest the fact Adolf Hitler’s party was named the National Socialist Party illustrated its left-wing origins.

Remembering the Holocaust Show all 16 1 /16 Remembering the Holocaust Remembering the Holocaust 80,000 shoes line a display case in Auschwitz I. The shoes of those who had been sent to their deaths were transported back to Germany for use of the Third Reich Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Barracks for prisoners in the vast Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camp. Here slept as many as four per bunk, translating to around one thousand people per barracks. The barracks were never heated in winter, so the living space of inmates would have been the same temperature as outside. Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Sign for the Auschwitz Museum on the snowy streets of Oswiecim, Poland Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust The Gateway to hell: The Nazi proclamation that work will set you free, displayed on the entrance gate of Auschwitz I Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust A disused watchtower, surveying a stark tree-lined street through Auschwitz I concentration camp Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Stolen property of the Jews: Numerous spectacles, removed from the possession of their owners when they were selected to die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust A sign bearing a skull and crossbones barks an order to a person to stop beside the once-electrified fences which reinforced the Auschwitz I camp Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust The peace and the evil: Flower tributes line a section of wall which was used for individual and group executions Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Life behind bars: Nazi traps set to hold the Third Reich’s ‘enemies’. In Auschwitz’s years of operation, there were around three hundred successful escapes. A common punishment for an escape attempt was death by starvation Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Burying the evidence: Remains of one of the several Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust The three-way railway track at the entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. This was the first sight the new camp arrivals saw upon completion of their journey. Just beside the tracks, husbands and wives, sons and daughters and brothers and sisters were torn from each other. Most never saw their relatives again Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust A group of visitors move through the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Viewed from the main entrance watchtower of Auschwitz-Birkenau Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust "The Final Solution": The scale of the extermination efforts of the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau can be seen by comparing the scale of the two figures at the far left of the image to the size of the figure to the left of the railway tracks' three point split Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Each cattle car would transport up to one hundred people, who could come from all over Europe, sometimes from as far away as Norway or Greece. Typically, people would have been loaded onto the trucks with around three days food supply. The journey to Auschwitz could sometimes take three weeks. Hannah Bills

Despite their name, the Nazis espoused a fascist and explicitly anti-communist ideology. They are widely accepted to have been on the far right of the political spectrum.

Yad Vashem’s website states that Germany’s defeat in the First World War “created fertile soil for the growth of radical right-wing groups in Germany, spawning entities such as the Nazi Party”.

The centre in Jerusalem documents the Holocaust and is a memorial to the six million Jews murdered by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

Mr Bolsonaro visisted Yad Vashem on Tuesday during a four-day trip to Israel.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has embraced Mr Bolsonaro despite his Brazilian counterpart repeatedly airing racist, homophobic and misogynist views.

Mr Bolsonaro’s visit had initially been seen as a potential boost to Mr Netanyahu’s prospects in elections next week, but the trip fell short of fulfilling the Israeli prime minister’s expressed hope that Brazil would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The Brazilian leader had suggested soon after his inauguration in January that he would move the embassy, but his government later backtracked. Brazilian officials instead announced during his Israel visit that the country would open a trade office in Jerusalem.

Mr Netanyahu has said he hopes the trade office is a step towards moving the embassy relocating to Jerusalem.

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US president Donald Trump, who Mr Bolsonaro regards as an ally and kindred spirit, recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017 and ordered the American embassy to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in the face of international outcry.