BERLIN (AFP)---Jewish leaders in Germany on Tuesday condemned a decision to hold the annual Munich carnival on Sunday, which will see it coincide with International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

"It is an insult to the victims of the Holocaust whose memory should be honoured on this day," the vice-president of the Central Council of Jews, Salomon Korn, said in a statement.

Fellow vice-president Dieter Graumann said the decision by local authorities in the Bavarian capital to hold the carnival on January 27 was "thoughtless and tasteless".

The head of the Council, Holocaust survivor Charlotte Knobloch, charged that the memory of the six million Jews who were systematically murdered by the Nazis during World War II was being "dishonoured".

International Holocaust Remembrance Day falls on the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp on January 27, 1945, by the Red Army.

Carnivals are held in towns and cities across Germany before the Christian season of Lent.

Sunday’s procession through the streets of Munich is expected to draw some 20,000 spectators.