US Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez must be made to understand that she is showing a serious lack of knowledge over what concentration camps were: places that “helped assure the ultimate goal of extermination” of six million Jews by the Nazis.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is drawing widespread criticism for her comments this week that the “United States is running concentration camps on our southern border.”
Adding insult to injury, she said that she was directing her comments to those who “are concerned enough with humanity to say that ‘Never Again’ means something.”
Concentration camps were used by the Nazis in the Holocaust and “Never Again” is a battle cry that has been used over the decades, vowing that the Holocaust will never be repeated.
Criticism of the New York congresswoman has come from the left as well as the right.
It has also come from places like Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, which tweeted that “concentration camps assured a slave labor supply to help in the Nazi war effort, even as the brutality of life inside the camps helped assure the ultimate goal of ‘extermination through labor.'”
Yad Vashem urged Ocasio-Cortez to “learn about concentration camps.” To help her in this effort, the remembrance authority included links on its Twitter post to access background material.
The anger over the comments stemmed from disbelief that a member of Congress could be so ignorant of history and her willingness to make such a comparison between concentration camps and the U.S. detention centers at the American border.
Speaking on MSNBC, part of the liberal media, “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd said that “you can call our government’s detention of migrants many things, depending on how you see it. It’s a stain on our nation maybe, a necessary evil to others, a deal with untenable situation perhaps,” but “you can’t call it” running concentration camps.
“If you want to criticize the shameful treatment of people at our border fine, you’ll have plenty of company. But be careful comparing them to Nazi concentration camps, because they’re not at all comparable,” Todd added.
Todd also challenged the differentiation made by Ocasio-Cortez between concentration camps and detention camps, telling the congresswoman that “tens of thousands were also brutalized, starved, and ultimately died in concentration camps.”
Tell Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez to educate herself about the Holocaust and to think twice the next time she wants to make any such comparison!
Make your position clear by calling the congresswoman’s office:
Washington: (202) 225-3965
New York: (718) 662-5970
If you reside in her district, use this contact form: https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/contact
If you reside outside her district, use this email address: us@ocasio2018.com
