Distorting the True Nature of “Concentration Camps”
Most leaders of the Jewish community reacted with appropriate indignation to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez using the terms “concentration camps” and “never again” to compare Trump’s border policies to Hitler’s holocaust.
An LA Times Op-Ed, however, outrageously supports her with the headline: “I’m Jewish and I don’t say this lightly: ‘Never Again’ is right now in America.”
The opinion piece by David Ulin shrugs at the fact that the two key purposes of Nazi concentration camps—providing slave labor and perpetrating mass killing—have never been witnessed at border detention facilities.
Nazis ripped millions from their homes against their will, but today’s asylum seekers left home by choice to find refuge in America. Some will win acceptance under established legal procedures but failure to welcome all-comers hardly amounts to Nazism. To claim otherwise distorts the true nature of the Holocaust and undermines our ability to resist real fascist dangers should they ever arise.