A 93-year-old Holocaust survivor spoke out against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) statements last week comparing migrant detention centers to concentration camps.
“She should be removed from Congress. She’s spreading anti-Semitism, hatred, and stupidity,” Ed Mosberg, a Morris Plains, New Jersey, resident and Holocaust survivor told the New York 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,” he added.
Ocasio-Cortez has repeatedly used social media to make a talking point out of likening migrant detention centers on the southern border to places of torture, not ruling out comparing those sites to concentration camps.
Mosberg, who is also the president the Holocaust-education group “From the Depths,” invited Ocasio-Cortez to tour “the German Nazi concentration camps” and the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland— which has a museum and a memorial site.
Mosberg— who survived the Plaszów and Mauthausen camps— said he hoped to take her to all those sites, especially the site at Auschwitz where his mother was killed.
While other members of Congress urged her to go on the trip, the freshman Democrat publicly declined the invitation while tweeting back and forth in an argument with Rep. Steve King (R-IA).
The 93-year-old said he was very disappointed Ocasio-Cortez declined his offer to go, but left an open invitation to her should she want to explore the concentration camps.
“She should be taught a lesson,” Mosberg 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.”
Meanwhile, a press representative for Ocasio-Cortez defended the remarks in a statement, saying that the congresswoman makes a clear “distinction between a death camp and concentration camp. She’s been pretty outspoken about the issue.”