Washington – US Holocaust Museum Rejects All ‘analogies Between The Holocaust And Other Events’

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    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a briefing in the Rayburn Building in Washington, D.C., May 23, 2019. She has sparked a debate about the use of the term "concentration camps." (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)Washington – The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum reiterated a strong rejection of analogies to the Holocaust in the wake of the debate surrounding the term “concentration camps” sparked by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

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    The 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.”

    The statement linked to one from December following a similar controversy regarding migrant detention camps run by the Trump administration.

    Ocasio-Cortez last week likened migrant detention camps on the border to concentration camps, and invoked the phrase “Never again.” After critics slammed her for what they said was an invocation of the Holocaust, she said she is not likening the detention camps to the camps run by the Nazis, but rather to a definition of the term that has been used for other detention camps, including those that imprisoned Japanese Americans during World War II.

    The clarification did not convince all of her critics and a firestorm has continued with critics saying that she is indeed invoking the Holocaust.

    The museum statement appears to be sparked by an article in World Israel News that accuses a Holocaust museum historian of embracing the view that the current migrant detention camps are analogous to Nazi-run concentration camps.

    “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,” the statement said.

    In fact, the historian, Becky Erbelding, had approved on Twitter of a statement by Ocasio-Cortez that likened the migrant detention camps to concentration camps, but explicitly said they were not analogous to Nazi-run concentration camps.

    The World Israel News article had mischaracterized the Ocasio-Cortez statement as invoking the Holocaust. Erbelding in a statement called for a retraction and apology from World Israel News and said, “Holocaust analogies are lazy, distracting, insensitive, and incorrect.” She added in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “I support the Museum’s stance on avoiding Holocaust analogies.”

    The Holocaust Museum told JTA it stands by its statement, and did the author of the World Israel News story respond to a request for an interview.


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    7 Comments
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    kehati
    kehati
    4 years ago

    The extreme Right denies the Holocaust while the Extreme Left minimizes it by comparing it to anything that caused pain to people.Needless to say, the final goal of both sides is identical.

    4 years ago

    i would never let her step on such Holy soil that’s saturated with Jewish blood HY”D – she would desecrate this Holy site

    ayinglefunadorf
    ayinglefunadorf
    4 years ago

    What is the big tzimes? How many times people calling even some Yiden like Soros “Nazis” etc. “KAPOS etc. I for sure dont expect from her any better than from some “Educated” Yiden right here. Get used to it and move on.

    PaulinSaudi
    PaulinSaudi
    4 years ago

    If we cannot compare modern events to the Holocaust, we will talk less about it. It will lose its importance in our memory. In time we will forget. That is not good.

    4 years ago

    Time to leave the Holocaust alone. If Jews dont stop threatening anyone with it,what do we want from AOC? Shes using the proper words while the world is trivializing her words by saying that the Nazis set up were just “concentration camps”
    The Southern borders “concentration camps” bears NO resemblance to the Nazi concentration camps. If people like Rabbi Shmuly draws resemblance then he should stop exploiting it for political reasons ONLY.
    The Jews are using her words and garnering unnecessary attention. Very bad Rabbi Shmuly!