AOC INVITED BY POLISH PARLIAMENTARIAN TO SEE CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN HIS COUNTRY

In the open letter, Dominik told Ocasio-Cortez that he was writing to her "out of distress in having learned of your recent statements regarding concentration camps."

By Ilanit Chernick

The Jerusalem Post
June 20, 2019

Polish Parliamentary member Tarcynski Dominik has invited US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to visit Poland, following her remarks in which she compared migrant detention camps on the United States’ southern border to Nazi-era “concentration camps” during an Instagram Live with her followers on Monday.

Dominik, who is the vice president of European Conservatives in the European Council, tweeted the open letter to the democrat representative on Thursday evening.

"With this letter," he wrote, "I am formally inviting @AOC to come to Poland, where Adolf Hitler set up the worst chain of concentration camps the world has ever seen, so that she may see that scoring political points with enflamed rhetoric is unacceptable in our contemporary Western societies."

In the open letter, Dominik told Ocasio-Cortez that he was writing to her "out of distress in having learned of your recent statements regarding concentration camps."

“As you should be aware, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi), who led Germany, were responsible for the darkest period in my country’s and our whole continent’s history by devising a chain of concentration camps in order to exterminate those who they believed were subhuman, or a threat to their imperialistic machinations - this included both Jewish Poles and non-Jewish Poles, and as a result we lost six million of our citizens," he penned.

Dominik explained that under German-Nazi occupation, "a number of concentration camps were set up in my country, Poland."

"It has caused a deep wound that persists on our proud Polish and European history that we must deal with every single day, and that we reaffirm to one another can never be forgotten, and never allowed to happen again," he continued. “This is why when someone cheapens the history, or uses it for political point-scoring, we become agitated and upset.”

“You speak often of bipartisanship, and I feel this is one area in particular where we can begin to live that ideal.”

Following Ocasio-Cortez's remarks on Monday, Yad Vashem encouraged her to educate herself about concentration camps.

“.@AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] Concentration camps assured a slave labor supply to help in the Nazi war effort, even as the brutality of life inside the camps helped assure the ultimate goal of "extermination through labor," the world Holocaust remembrance center tweeted on Wednesday evening.

“Learn about concentration camps,” Yad Vashem added, while including several links to information on Nazi concentration camps in the Holocaust.

In the Instagram video, the congresswoman said that the "United States is running concentration camps on our southern border.”

“That is exactly what they are: they are concentration camps and if that doesn’t bother you, then [I don’t know],” she said as she gestured, adding that she was speaking to those who “are concerned enough with humanity to say that ‘Never Again’ means something and... that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the Home of the Free [United States].”

"Never Again" is a common phrase used when pledging to never allow the atrocities experienced in the Holocaust to occur again.

“We need to do something about it,” she told her viewers. “This is not just about the immigrant communities being held in concentration camps, it’s a crisis of if America will remain America in its actual principles and values.”

Following major backlash from several Jewish groups and politicians, as well as a call from House GOP leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy for the congresswoman to apologize for her remarks, Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter on Wednesday night to defend her actions.

“I will never apologize for calling these camps what they are,” she said. “If that makes you uncomfortable, fight the camps - not the nomenclature.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: AOC probably would not have been slammed had she not used the phrase “never again.” Up until that point, her comment did not compare the migrant concentration camps to the Nazi concentration camps.