U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, standing near Rep. Joaquin Castro, speaks to the news media after she and other members of Congress toured two Border patrol stations following reports of migrants kept in inadequate condtions, in Clint, Texas, U.S. July 1, 2019. REUTERS/Julio-Cesar Chavez
Holocaust survivor Ed Mosberg, 93, criticized Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) remarks comparing the migrant detention facilities to concentration camps as “evil” in comments to the New York Post.
Mosberg is the president of the Holocaust education organization From the Depths, which invited to Ocasio-Cortez on June 21 to tour Auschwitz. Ocasio-Cortez declined the invitation in a June 24 tweet replying to Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), stating, “The last time you went on this trip it was reported that you also met w/ fringe Austrian neo-Nazi groups to talk shop. So I’m going to have to decline your invite. But thank you for revealing to all how transparently the far-right manipulates these moments for political gain.”
Mosberg told the Post on June 29 that Ocasio-Cortez simply “doesn’t want to learn” is “looking for excuses.” He called for her to “be removed from Congress” for “spreading anti-Semitism, hatred and stupidity. 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.”
He added, “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.”
Mosberg, who has been dealing with blood cancer, was sent to the Warsaw ghetto with his family in 1941, when he was 13. He was later sent to the Mauthasen and Plaszow camps. Mosberg was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust.
Two other Holocaust survivors have similarly criticized Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks. Ocasio-Cortez’s office told the Post that Ocasio-Cortez “made a distinction between a death camp and concentration camp. She’s been pretty outspoken about the issue.”
The freshman congresswoman visited the detention facilities on July 1, where she claimed that Border Patrol officers told women to drink water out of toilet bowls.
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