A Holocaust survivor is taking aim at Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after her controversial remark comparing migrant detention facilities to concentration camps, with the 93-year-old saying she deserves the “Nobel Prize in stupidity” for her comment.
Ed Mosberg was a survivor of the Plaszow and Mauthausen camps, and this week, he spoke to the New York Post about the Bronx congresswoman’s comments. Mosberg reacted to a video Ocasio-Cortez had posted on Instagram claiming that the United States was “running concentration camps at the southern border” and reiterating her belief that the detention facilities were the same as concentration camps.
Mosberg did not see it the same way, accusing Ocasio-Cortez of spreading anti-Semitism, hatred and stupidity.
“The people on the border aren’t forced to be there — they go there on their own will,” Mosberg said. “If someone doesn’t know the difference, either they’re playing stupid or they just don’t care.”
Mosberg said those who were sent to Nazi concentration camps during World War II were not free and were forced into the camps by Germans who executed and murdered people en masse. Mosberg’s family was wiped out in the Holocaust, the report noted.
The Holocaust survivor went on to say that Ocasio-Cortez is being willfully ignorant about the difference between American detention facilities for migrants and camps for Jewish people and other perceived enemies of the Nazi Party in Germany.
“She doesn’t want to learn — she’s looking for excuses,” he said. “I would like to nominate her for the Nobel Prize in stupidity.”
Even some within Ocasio-Cortez’s own party are taking aim at her for the remark. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo attacked the comments this week, saying it was “wholly inappropriate” for her to invoke memories of the Holocaust, which showed a lack of understanding on her part of the true horrors of genocide. As Fox News noted, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum also released a statement saying it “unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary.”
Our full page ad in today’s @nytimes countering @AOC trivialization of the #holocaust . We must fix the humanitarian crisis on the border. But comparing it to the genocide of six million Jews desecrates the memory of the victims and the #NeverAgain commitment against genocide. pic.twitter.com/CKC7fsCRUq
— Rabbi Shmuley (@RabbiShmuley) June 23, 2019
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s comparison of migrant detention centers to concentration camps has generated plenty of backlash but support as well. Others agree that the facilities fit the definition of concentration camps, especially given the controversial conditions within. Over the past few weeks, human rights groups and lawmakers who have toured facilities set up to house migrants said that the conditions there are deplorable, with inadequate food and medical care. In some facilities, migrant girls as young as 8 allegedly have to serve as surrogate mothers for infants they have never met because the guards do not watch after the children.
