As a grandson of Holocaust survivors, I’m appalled Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., compared the unsettling practice of separating immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border to history’s “darkest periods” such as the Shoah.

“This policy of family separation reminds us of the cattle cars of Nazi Germany when children were separated from their parents and marched to supposed showers,” Blumenthal, one of eight Jewish members of the Senate, said on Monday. “It reminds us of the Japanese internment camps. It reminds us of all the darkest periods.”