Posted on 07/01/2019 7:01:09 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
More than 300 scholars have signed onto an open letter urging the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to retract its statement that rejects comparisons between migrant detention facilities and concentration camps.
"The Museum’s decision to completely reject drawing any possible analogies to the Holocaust, or to the events leading up to it, is fundamentally ahistorical," the scholars write in a write in a letter letter published in The New York Review of Books. "It has the potential to inflict severe damage on the Museum’s ability to continue its role as a credible, leading global institution dedicated to Holocaust memory, Holocaust education, and research in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies."
The letter, which is addressed to museum director Sara J. Bloomfield, goes on to argue that the "very core of Holocaust education is to alert the public to dangerous developments that facilitate human rights violations and pain and suffering; pointing to similarities across time and space is essential for this task."
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) last month sparked massive pushback after equating migrant detention facilities near the U.S.-Mexico border to concentration camps.
Many Republican lawmakers called for Ocasio-Cortez to apologize, though the freshman lawmaker has stood by her comments. She's said that she would never "apologize for calling these camps what they are."
The Holocaust Museum said in a statement at the time that it "unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary."
"The Museum further reiterates that a statement ascribed to a Museum staff historian regarding recent attempts to analogize the situation on the United States southern border to concentration camps in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s does not reflect the position of the Museum," it said on its website.
The Holocaust Museum did not immediate respond to a request for comment on the letter from The Hill.
The scholars take issue with the museum's stance, saying it represents a "radical position that is far removed from mainstream scholarship on the Holocaust and genocide."
"And it makes learning from the past almost impossible," the letter says, before concluding that it hopes the museum will continue to be a place from which the world can learn.
Nazi Germany erected concentration camps in the 1930s to hold Jewish people and other political prisoners under harsh conditions, ultimately killing millions.
President Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration has led to the expansion of migrant detention centers along the southern border and has drawn scrutiny for overcrowded facilities.
Ocasio-Cortez on Monday was one of several Democratic lawmakers who visited a migrant detention facility as Customs and Border Protection faces criticism over the conditions to which detainees are exposed.
300 idiots.
Hundreds of scholars who should never be allowed in any classroom and whose books should languish on store shelves until the paper turns to powder.
Scholars = Leftist propagandists
This is outrageously insane. Concentration camps were populated with people who went there AGAINST THEIR WILL. The detention camps on the border are populated by people who have gone there WILLINGLY into the area where they know they are going to be detained, and upon release, have every right to leave the area. Not so with concentration camps. The comparison is simply not there. There are so many evil people trying to get the leftists into control we ARE going to end up in concentration camps when we disagree with them.
“Scholars?” More like retromingent blind fools.
How many scholars refused to sign the letter? Without that information, we can’t judge the significance of 300 signatures.
Wow. These people have no soul.
If the Dems were smart they would equate them with gulags and those camps of pol pot.
No one gives a hoot about those.
and what are the names of these scholars?
are they kindergarteners?
The left is demanding that absolutely everybody actively joins its hatred of Trump. If they could they would make approving of him a crime.
I see that these “scholars” and their academic bona fides are not listed at all. So whether or not these idjits are, in fact, scholars is merely conjecture.
Scholars in what?? According to what authority??? Who cares??
More than 300 scholars...
Scholars my ass. European Jewry was rounded up and forced onto trains and truck trailers, and fed into ovens and gas chambers against their will. The illegals trying to stampede their way across our border into our country are doing so willingly, and are not being killed when they get here. Anyone who tries to equate those experiences is a moron and a liar.
That would be former scholars who now identify as political hacks.
I tried to find the names. I’m wondering if any have immediate connections to loss of life in German camps.
dox the “scholars”...
In 2015, President Obama’s crackdown on illegal immigration led to the expansion of migrant detention centers along the southern border and has never drawn scrutiny for overcrowded facilities.
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