There’s a risk to using a historical epoch hyperbolically to decry a current event: If it’s recent enough, there may be someone who is a first-hand witness to the former.
In an essay deploring Trump Administration immigration enforcement policies on the Mexican border, in The Daily Princetonian, Samuel Aftel claims that, “Other media have depicted children crying while being separated from their parents, and, as Liz Goodwin of the Boston Globe reported via Twitter, ‘some migrants are told their kids are going to be taken away briefly to bathe, and then it dawns on them hours later they aren’t coming back.’ This exemplifies fascist totalitarianism at its most ruthless, unhinged level: that is, deceptively upending reality to terrorize children.”
“Although family separation is not murderous genocide, the “we are just taking them to bathe” tactic is chillingly reminiscent of the way Nazis during the Holocaust told people in concentration camps that they were going to have a shower before they were gassed to death.”
Responding to bigger names who have made similar claims, concentration camp survivor David Tuck told The Daily Caller, “They know nothing of the Holocaust. Grow up. You can’t compare. Every time I hear it, it’s sickening.”
“Wake up. This is not the Holocaust.”
