"Ovadia Yosef (Hebrew: עובדיה יוסף*; Arabic: يوسف* عبدالله** ‘Abdullah Yūsuf)[2] (September 24, 1920 – October 7, 2013),[3] was the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel, a recognized Talmudic scholar and an authority on halakha."
In 2000, he described the Holocaust as God's retribution against the reincarnated soul of Jewish sinners: "The six million Holocaust victims were reincarnations of the souls of sinners, people who transgressed and did all sorts of things that should not be done. They had been reincarnated in order to atone.".[52][53]
Shas chairman Eli Yishai said criticism of the rabbi is unjustified, explaining, "Rabbi Ovadia weeps for every Jew who is killed ... but nobody, not even a saint, has not sinned. Everyone dies in a state of sin. It's even stated that he declared that Hitler was a messenger sent to do God's work before the arrival of the Messiah."[52]
In 2009, Yosef repeated his claims that the holocaust was retribution for re-incarnated sinners: "After all, people are upset and ask why was there a Holocaust? Woe to us, for we have sinned. Woe to us, for there is nothing we can say to justify it," he said. "It goes without saying that we believe in reincarnation... It is a reincarnation of those souls... All those poor people in the Holocaust we wonder why it was done. There were righteous people among them. Still, they were punished because of sins."[54]