Holocaust commemoration group invites Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez on 'educational tour' of Auschwitz with a survivor after she said Trump is building 'concentration camps' on the Mexican border
By Maxine Shen and Emily Goodin
Daily Mail
June 22, 2019
A Holocaust commemoration group has invited Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to tour Auschwitz in the wake of backlash she's facing for calling the Trump administration's border migrant detention centers 'concentration camps.'
From the Depths posted an open letter on its Facebook page Friday, inviting Ocasio-Cortez to go on an educational tour of Nazi German's Holocaust concentration camps this summer, which would be led by organization president and Holocaust survivor, Edward Mosberg, 93.
The 'educational tour' was 'specifically built for legislators' and would include visits to Mauthausen, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek concentration camps, among other historic sites.
From the Depths wrote that 'over 100 international parliamentarians from across the political spectrum' have gone on the tour thus far, including more than 20 members of Congress from both the GOP and Democrat parties.
The invite comes just days after Ocasio-Cortez made headlines for a saying and tweeting that the Trump administration's migrant detention facilities were 'concentration camps.'
'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,' the freshman congresswoman from New York wrote on Twitter Tuesday, linking to an article from Esquire on the subject.
Republicans were quick to pounce on Ocasio-Cortez for her use of the 'concentration camp' term in this context.
'Please @AOC do us all a favor and spend just a few minutes learning some actual history,' tweeted Republican Liz Cheney, the party's third most senior member of the House. '6 million Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust. You demean their memory and disgrace yourself with comments like this.'
'People like @AOC -- who are not lifting a finger to solve the problem -- comparing the men and women serving our country to concentration camp guards do the Congress and country a great disservice,' Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted.
On Wednesday, Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House minority leader, told press that she should apologize 'not only to the nation but to the world' for what she tweeted.
'She does not understand what is going on at the border at the same time. There is no comparison. To actually say that is embarrassing,' McCarthy said.
'To take somewhere in history where millions of Jews died, and equate that to somewhere that's happening on the border, she owes this nation an apology.'
Despite the backlash, Ocasio-Cortez, defended her word choice.
Reacting to his demand, she tweeted Wednesday: 'DHS ripped 1000s of children from their parents & put them in cages w inhumane conditions.
'They call their cells "dog pounds" & "freezers." I will never apologize for calling these camps what they are. If that makes you uncomfortable, fight the camps - not the nomenclature.'
She went on to defend herself by arguing concentration camps were different from Nazi death camps or extermination camps, where more than 3million were estimated to have been killed during World War II.
'And for the shrieking Republicans who don't know the difference: And that's exactly what this administration is doing,' she wrote on Twitter.
'Concentration camps are considered by experts as "the mass detention of civilians without trial." And that’s exactly what this administration is doing.'
She also tweeted that 'The US ran concentration camps before, when we rounded up Japanese people during WWII. It is such a shameful history that we largely ignore it. These camps occur throughout history. Many refuse to learn from that shame, but here we are today. We have an obligation to end them.'
In its open letter, attributed to the group's founder, Jonny Daniels, From the Depths noted the backlash Ocasio-Cortez faced.
'We firmly believe that this was not your intention, this was not done out of spite or ill faith, rather a misguided comment, due to a lack of proper education on the Holocaust, a significant issue of our generation,' the letter read.
The group pointed out that it is 'entirely run by millennials,' the same generation that 29-year-old Ocasio-Cortez belongs to, and that going on the proffered tour 'would be great opportunity for you to learn more about this horrendous past, and understand how it impacts lives and education until today.'
Ocasio-Cortez has not yet publicly responded to From the Depths' invitation.
She previously came under fire from conservatives in November 2018, after using the Holocaust analogy to point out that applying for refugee status should not in itself be considered a crime.
'Asking to be considered a refugee and applying for status isn't a crime,' Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. 'It wasn't for Jewish families fleeing Germany. It wasn't for targeted families fleeing Rwanda. It wasn't for communities fleeing war-torn Syria. And it isn't for those fleeing violence in Central America.'
According to NBC, as of early June, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was detaining more than 52,500 immigrants every day in a network of more than 200 detention centers. The outlets reports that 24 immigrants have died in ICE custody during the Trump administration, while at least four others died shortly after being released.
That number also does not include those, including five children, who died in the custody of other federal agencies.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Both sets of my grandparents died in the Nazi concentration camps. I do not believe AOC demeaned the memory of those who died in the Nazi slave labor and extermination camps, nor do I believe she intended to.
The Holocaust should not be demeaned. The term ‘concentration camps’ in and of itself should not be offensive to Jews. It’s when you prefix the term with ‘Nazi’ that Jews have a right to be outraged.
I am most certainly not a fan of AOC. Had she said “This administration has established Nazi-like concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants,” I would have jumped on her ass in a New York minute. But she didn’t say that! That’s why I have to defend her.
A visit to Auschwitz, however, might keep AOC from defending fellow congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib when those two Jew-hating Muslims are criticized for making their anti-Semitic pronouncements.
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