Polish Politician Offers 'Olive Branch of Education' To Give AOC a Firsthand Look at Real Concentration Camps
Earlier this week, democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York appeared to compare migrant holding facilities on America’s southern border to Nazi-run concentration camps.
If you haven’t heard about her stupid statement, welcome to planet Earth. I hope you come in peace.
AOC’s comments have drawn much criticism. Much.
From the right.
From the left.
And even from non-partisan groups.
But one of the most recent critiques of her statement might be the most damning. And the most humiliating.
On Thursday, Dominik Tarczyński, a member of the Polish Sejm (the lower house in that country’s parliament), wrote a blistering open letter, in the form of a very unique invitation, to AOC.
Tarczyński’s started by saying he was very concerned about AOC’s comments.
“I write to you out of distress in having learned of your recent statements regarding concentration camps,” Tarczyński wrote.
And then Tarczyński gave AOC a much-needed history lesson.
“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 which resulted in the loss of six million of our citizens,” Tarczyński wrote.
“While under German Nazi occupation, a number of concentration camps were set up in my country, Poland,” Tarczyński continued. “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.”
Then, Tarczyński lowered the boom.
“This is why when someone cheapens the history, or uses it for political point-scoring, we become agitated and upset,” Tarczyński wrote.
“With this in mind, however, I wish to extend the olive branch of education to you, Congresswoman, and would be delighted if you would accept my offer to come to Poland and study the concentration camps here for real, so that you can see first hand how different it is from your immigration processing centers on the U.S. border,” he added.
With this letter, 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 pic.twitter.com/ivOTfmiCfo
— TARCZYŃSKI Dominik (@D_Tarczynski) June 20, 2019
“At your convenience, we could visit Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor and Majdanek,” he said.
“At these camps and others, over three million human souls were extinguished, and millions more detained and affected directly.”
If AOC thinks that Tarczyński is the only international authority who believes her statement was a huge mistake, she will be unpleasantly surprised.
The official Twitter account of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial center in Jerusalem, tweeted the following directly at her:
.@AOC 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.”
Learn about concentration camps https://t.co/oBPQsjf6FC#Holocaust #History pic.twitter.com/nmc9As2nlO
— Yad Vashem (@yadvashem) June 19, 2019
Though I doubt AOC will take Tarczyński up on his invitation to visit Poland, perhaps she could take the time to just read a little.
I’m sure everyone would appreciate it.
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