A Holocaust survivor blasted Ocasio-Cortez for her concentration camp remarks, saying she’s “spreading anti-Semitism.”
By World Israel News Staff
Concentration camp survivor Ed Mosberg says New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “should be removed from Congress” following statements she made about a week and a half ago comparing detention centers on America’s southern border to “concentration camps,” according to The New York Post.
“She’s spreading anti-Semitism, hatred and stupidity,” Mosberg told the Post. “The people on the border aren’t forced to be there — they go there on their own will. If someone doesn’t know the difference, either they’re playing stupid or they just don’t care.”
Mosberg, 93, from Morris Plains, N.J., survived the Plaszów and Mauthausen concentration camps. He lost his entire family in the Holocaust.
“Her statement is evil. It hurts a lot of people. At the concentration camp, we were not free. We were forced there by the Germans who executed and murdered people — there’s no way you can compare,” he said to the Post.
Mosberg, who runs a Holocaust-education group From the Depths, invited the freshman democratic congresswoman through Facebook on June 21 to tour concentration camps in Europe. She declined the offer.
Mosberg told the Post he was disappointed by her response. “She should be taught a lesson,” he said. “If you’re not there, you will never know what happened. She doesn’t want to learn — she’s looking for excuses. I would like to nominate her for the Nobel Prize in stupidity.”
He predicted “she will lose all the Jewish vote in New York.”
Ocasio-Cortez had posted a video of herself on her Instagram account on June 17 saying that the U.S. is “running concentration camps on our southern border.”
She was roundly criticized by Jewish groups such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Yad Vashem for making the comparison.
Later, on June 24, the U.S. Holocaust Museum also issued a statement.
“The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary,” the statement read in part.
Ocasio-Cortez attempted to draw a distinction between concentration camps and death camps and says she will continue to use the former term.
“This is an opportunity for us to talk about how we learn from our history in order to prevent it from ever happening in any form, at any step, whether it’s a concentration camp, or whether it’s the final steps of that phase from happening,” she told CNN’s Jake Tapper on June 27.