Holocaust survivor who offered to tour Auschwitz with Ocasio-Cortez calls for her to ‘be removed from Congress’

A Holocaust survivor who offered to tour Auschwitz with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said she should be removed from Congress for spreading “anti-Semitism, hatred and stupidity.”

Edward Mosberg, a 93-year-old who is president of the Holocaust commemoration group From The Depths, criticized the freshman lawmaker for her comments calling U.S. migrant detention centers “concentration camps.”

“She should be removed from Congress. She’s spreading anti-Semitism, hatred and stupidity,” Mosberg told The New York Post. “The people on the border aren’t forced to be there — they go there on their own will. If someone doesn’t know the difference, either they’re playing stupid or they just don’t care.”{mosads}

Ocasio-Cortez faced fierce backlash from Republicans and some Democrats last month for comparing the Trump administration’s migrant detention centers housing thousands of people along the U.S.-Mexico border to concentration camps.

“Her statement is evil. It hurts a lot of people. At the concentration camp, we were not free,” Mosberg told the Post. “We were forced there by the Germans who executed and murdered people — there’s no way you can compare.”

Mosberg’s group wrote an open invitation to the progressive congresswoman last month asking her to participate in the educational tour during her summer recess.

The 93-year-old said he would have traveled with Ocasio-Cortez on a tour specifically designed for legislators to Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Mauthausen and Majdanek.

Ocasio-Cortez publicly rejected the offer after she was urged to participate by Republican Rep. Steve King (Iowa), who previously went on a tour with the group. 

Mosberg told the Post that he was disappointed by Ocasio-Cortez’s rejection and said he wanted to show her where his family members were murdered at the hands of the Nazis.

“If you’re not there, you will never know what happened. She doesn’t want to learn — she’s looking for excuses. I would like to nominate her for the Nobel Prize in stupidity,” he said.

Ocasio-Cortez at the time dismissed barbs from “shrieking Republicans” who criticized her comments, saying they did not know the difference between concentration camps and death camps.

“Concentration camps are considered by experts as ‘the mass detention of civilians without trial.’ And that’s exactly what this administration is doing,” she wrote on Twitter. 

She said she would “never apologize” for her remarks.

Mosberg warned that she could risk losing “all the Jewish vote in New York.”

The Polish-born real estate developer in New Jersey survived several Nazi camps, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He was awarded the Order of Merit, his country’s highest civilian distinction, from Polish President Andrzej Duda earlier this year for his work as a philanthropist and educator. 

The Hill has reached out to Ocasio-Cortez’s office for comment.