AOC: Liz Cheney fueled concentration camp remarks to 'manipulate pain'
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum on Monday denounced “efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events” – a reaction to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s equating border facilities for migrants to concentration camps.
The New York freshman Democrat sparked an outcry last week by accusing the Trump administration of housing immigrants in “concentration camps” on the Mexican border.
“The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary,” the museum said in a statement.
“That position has repeatedly and unambiguously been made clear in the Museum’s official statement on the matter – a statement that is reiterated and reaffirmed now,” it continued.
“The Museum further reiterates that a statement ascribed to a Museum staff historian regarding recent attempts to analogize the situation on the United States southern border to concentration camps in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s does not reflect the position of the Museum.”
Becky Erbelding, an educator and historian at the DC museum, appeared to support Ocasio-Cortez’s position, according to World Israel News.
“The parallels to the 1930s-1940s refugee crisis are so obvious. Why can’t we learn?” she tweeted on Jan. 25, 2018, in reference to a PBS article titled “For Refugees in the Trump Era, a Tougher Path to the US.”
On Monday, the museum said it “deeply regrets any offense to Holocaust survivors and others that may have been engendered by any statement ascribed to a Museum historian in a personal capacity.”
In her incendiary comments, Ocasio-Cortez said: ”The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are – they are concentration camps – and if that doesn’t bother you.”
In a Q&A posted on politicsnowadays’ Instagram page, she added: “I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that we should not — that ‘Never Again’ means something.”
The self-described Democratic socialist also called President Trump a “fascist” for carrying out such policies against immigrants.
“I don’t use those words lightly. I don’t use those words to just throw bombs,” she continued. “I use the word because that’s what an administration that creates concentration camps is. A presidency that creates concentration camps is fascist and it’s very difficult to say that.”
Her comments drew a backlash, including from Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
”Please @AOC do us all a favor and spend just a few minutes learning some actual history. 6 million Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust,” she said in a tweet. “You demean their memory and disgrace yourself with comments like this.”
