The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum issued a statement on Monday that criticized Democrats’ recent comparisons of migrant detention centers to concentration camps used during World War II.
“The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary. 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,” the museum said.
“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,” their statement continued.
The comparisons were started by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during an Instagram Live.
“I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity that ‘Never Again’ means something,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing and we need to do something about it.”
Fellow Democratic freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar said Ocasio-Cortez was right to make the comparison because, “There are camps and people are being concentrated.”
One of the lessons from the Holocaust is ‘Never Again’ – not only to mass murder, but also to the dehumanization of people, violations of basic rights, and assaults on our common morality. We fail to learn that lesson when we don’t callout such inhumanity right in front of us. https://t.co/EEBBkVL7FG
— (((Rep. Nadler))) (@RepJerryNadler) June 18, 2019
