Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, agreed with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s comparing U.S. immigration detention centers to the concentration camps Nazi Germany used during World War II.
“I would say that for 40 years before Auschwitz, we had concentration camps, things that were called concentration camps. What we’re doing now fits very cleanly inside that tradition,” Pitzer said on MSNBC.
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“At the same time, the death camps, which were on top of the existing concentration camp system, including Auschwitz and a series of other camps in which you had gas chambers, mass killings, that is a singular moment in history. And for the people who want to respect that, I think that’s fine and that’s important,” she continued. “If we want to call it irregular detention, if we want to call it extrajudicial detention, I don’t think we have to get stuck on that term. I wrote a history of the term. I had to use that term. And what I would really like people to know is the same thing is happening here now.”
Democratic New York Rep. Ocasio-Cortez tweeted an interview of Pitzer on the issue of the detention centers to defend her claim.
This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying.
This is not hyperbole. It is the conclusion of expert analysis ⬇️https://t.co/2dWHxb7UuL
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 18, 2019
Pitzer revealed on her Twitter account she wanted to include President Trump during the initial publication of her book, but “my editor and I decided it would be a disservice to larger history I was writing to project future hypotheticals in the book.” She said her book is critical to both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations for their border policies.
Mark Morgan, the acting director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, called Ocasio-Cortez’s comments, “completely inappropriate, it’s reckless, it’s irresponsible, it’s misinformed, and it’s flat-out wrong.”
