CALING TRUMP A NAZI IS A DEPRAVITY GOV. PRITZKER AND HIS FELLOW DEMOCRATS SHOULD NEVER BE EXONERATED FOR

Who is calling who a Nazi?

“Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s comparison of the Trump administration to the Nazi regime is deeply disturbing and unacceptable,” said Rabbi David Katz, executive director of the Israel Heritage Foundation. 

 

By Sara Lehmann

 

JNS

Feb 21, 2025

 

 

Veering from his “State of the State” budget address, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is Jewish, referred to Nazis no less than six times during his criticism of President Trump

 

The use of Nazi imagery has become so ubiquitous among Democrats that it almost precludes notice. But Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s parallels between U.S. President Donald Trump’s political agenda and the rise of Nazi Germany during his “State of the State” budget address on Feb. 19 hit a new low.

Veering from his speech, Pritzker, who is Jewish, referred to Nazis no less than six times during his criticism of Trump and his policies. In a glaring warning to Illinois citizens, he compared the rise of the Nazis to the Republican Party leader in the White House.

After castigating the president’s policies, including the deportation of violent illegal criminals, Pritzker said: “It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic.”

Such deceitful criticism of Trump reeks of partisan animosity of the basest kind. The governor’s confusing use of Nazi imagery is targeting the wrong culprit and, in the process, exonerating the real perpetrators.

Pritzker’s comments lend fuel to the anti-Israel and pro-Hamas protestors who have regularly used Nazi euphemisms against the Jews, libeling them as “genocide” perpetrators in Gaza and calling for the “final solution” for Jews all over the world. His comments ignore the reality of a president who was praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.”

Indeed, Pritzker’s rebuke of the president came on the same day that the Trump administration stopped all funding for the Palestinian Authority, which continues its “pay for slay” policies, paying terrorists and their families for murdering Jews. It comes two days after Israel received a shipment of heavy MK-84 bombs from the United States, following Trump’s lifting of a block imposed on the export of the munitions by the Biden administration.

Pritzker must not have gotten the memo regarding Trump’s executive order two weeks ago outlining a broad federal crackdown on “the explosion of antisemitism” in the United States, especially on college campuses. The executive order cites “an unprecedented wave of vile anti-Semitic discrimination, vandalism and violence.” It instructs U.S. policy to use “all available and appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.” This includes the canceling of visas for foreign students who are “Hamas sympathizers” and deporting “pro-jihadist” protesters.

Indeed, if any use of Holocaust imagery was justified, it was Trump’s description of the recent release of Jewish hostages from Hamas terrorist captivity. Trump said the emaciated and tortured hostages, Eli Sharabi, Or Levy and Ohad Ben Ami, “looked like Holocaust survivors.” And he doubled down on the necessity to defeat Hamas.

The Israel Heritage Foundation condemns Pritzker’s words in the strongest terms. The organization was founded to perpetuate the memory of the Six Million Holocaust victims through education, safeguard the State of Israel’s security and combat antisemitism.

Rabbi David Katz, executive director of Israel Heritage Foundation, as well as the son and son-in-law of Holocaust survivors, immediately tweeted out his shock and dismay. “Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s comparison of the Trump administration to the Nazi regime is deeply disturbing and unacceptable. It diminishes the Holocaust’s atrocities and harms the memories of the 6 million lives lost. We urge Gov. Pritzker to apologize. We also call on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to condemn this statement and reaffirm responsible discourse.”

Jerry Wartski is the honorary president of the Israel Heritage Foundation and a Holocaust survivor whose parents and many other family members were murdered by the Nazis. He is infuriated that Pritzker drew parallels between Trump and the Nazis. “What Pritzker says is mentally sick,” Wartski said. “The fact that he said this, especially as a Jew, is an affront to all Holocaust survivors. It hurts.”

The honorary chairman of the Israel Heritage Foundation, Jonathan Burkan, is similarly outraged by Pritzker’s statements. Appointed by Trump in 2019 to serve a five-year term as a United States Holocaust Memorial Council board member, Burkan demands the museum condemn the governor.

“If the museum does not denounce Pritzker for this outrage,” he said, “it would contradict one of its own objectives—namely, to prevent the normalizing of the Holocaust, which increases the chances of it happening again.”

Democrats and their cohorts are tripping over themselves while pouncing on Trump. But in the process, they are tripping themselves up. Calling Trump a Nazi, the day before the kidnapped bodies of the Bibas family were returned to Israel in coffins is a depravity no elected official should ever be exonerated for.