Karl Lagerfeld, the creative director of Chanel and Fendi, is known for making tactless and offensive comments. Over the years, he has publicly gone after women’s looks, Adele, Russian men, short men, men his age, swans, anorexia, Kim Kardashian and — quelle horreur — Meryl Streep.

His latest moment of inexplicable opinioneering arrived on Saturday. During a segment of the French television show “Salut les Terriens,” Mr. Lagerfeld criticized Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, for allowing nearly one million migrants to enter the country in 2015. (Ms. Merkel recently agreed to limit the number of asylum seekers allowed to enter to 200,000 annually.)

“One cannot — even if there are decades between them — kill millions of Jews so you can bring millions of their worst enemies in their place,” Mr. Lagerfeld said. He cited an anecdote in support of his assumptions that Jewish people and refugees are at odds.

“I know someone in Germany who took a young Syrian and after four days said, ‘The greatest thing Germany invented was the Holocaust,’” he said.