BERLIN (EJP) --- Former German central banker Thilo Sarrazin claims that Germany has allowed itself to become the euro zone’s “hostage” as penitence for the Holocaust, in his new book Europe doesn’t need the euro” which has provoked fresh controversy.

According to extracts from the book published in German Focus Magazine, Sarrazin theorises that German supporters of EU-back euro bonds “are driven by that very German reflex, that we can only finally atone for the Holocaust and World War II, when we have put all our interests and money into European hands”.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has up till now been a staunch opponent of euro bonds, which she claims will alleviate the necessary burden of austerity from under-fire eurozone countries such as Greece. Following the change in French president and the loss of one of her most loyal allies Nicolas Sarkozy, though, she may be forced to change her position at a informal EU summit on Wednesday in Brussels.

Sarrazin’s critics have responded to his Nazi blackmail claims by accusing him of desperate self-promotion. Speaking ahead of the book’s publication, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said:

“Either he is speaking and writing this appalling nonsense out of conviction or he is doing it with despicable calculation”.

Green party leader Juergen Trittin meanwhile described the move as “pathetic” and an attempt to “use the Holocaust to secure as much attention as possible for his euro bond thesis”.

Sarrazin was forced to resign from the board of the Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, following the publication of his 2010 bestseller “Germany does away with itself”, in which he accused Turkish and Arab immigrants of exploiting Germany’s welfare state, refusing to integrate and lowering the average intelligence.

He had also claimed all Jews share the same genetic make-up and feelings of racial superiority. The general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Stephan Kramer, stated the beleaguered former banker’s previous comments about Jews “put him firmly in the neo-Nazi camp”.

The extreme-right National Democratic Party meanwhile congratulated Sarrazin for “saying openly what most Germans think”. They disagreed, however, with his assessment of Jews, saying that “the Jew is not suddenly my friend because I am against Muslims (in Germany, and the Muslim is not my friend because I am against Israel”.