Holocaust survivor says AOC should be removed from Congress for ‘stupidity’

A 93-year-old Holocaust survivor said New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s past comments on concentration camps should be grounds to remove her from Congress.

Ed Mosberg survived the Plaszów and Mauthausen concentration camps and is the only one of his family to survive the Nazis’ mass extermination of Jews. In June, Ocasio-Cortez compared holding and detainment facilities for illegal immigrants on the U.S. southern border to Nazi-era 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.”

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

Ocasio-Cortez accused federal border agents of running concentration camps in a video on her Instagram.

“The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are. They are concentration camps,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity that ‘Never Again’ means something.”

Ocasio-Cortez has not apologized for the comparison despite being condemned by New York’s Jewish community. The freshman representative has continued to defend herself in statements and media appearances by attempting to distinguish between concentration camps and death camps.

Ocasio-Cortez used Japanese internment camps and the Boer War in an interview with CNN to contextualize her “concentration camp” comparison.

“When we talk about concentration camps, if we do not also talk about Japanese internment, if we don’t talk about the Boer War, if we don’t talk about the many times this has happened in the history of humanity, we also erase the suffering of those people,” she said.

Mosberg offered to give Ocasio-Cortez a tour of the camps he suffered in and members of his family died in to teach her about the history of the term, “concentration camp.”

“She should be taught a lesson,” Mosberg said. “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.”

When World War II broke out, Mosberg was 13 years old. In 1941, his family was sent to the ghetto in Krakow.

In 1943, the ghetto was liquidated, and his mother went to Auschwitz, where she was murdered. Mosberg and his siblings were sent to Płaszów, and from there to numerous German Nazi concentration camps, including Mauthausen, Klaudel explained.

Infected with tuberculosis, he spent many months in an Italian sanatorium following the war. In spite of everything, “the 19-year-old swore to live a full life again [and] he made contact with Cesia Storch, a young woman from Krakow imprisoned in the camp barracks with his sisters. With a Gr. 7 education and $10 in his pocket, Edward arrived in New York City in 1951 with his new fiancée, living in Harlem with their 18-month-old daughter.”

Mosberg simultaneously worked three jobs, including suturing pocketbooks, earning 50¢ an hour, before becoming a successful property developer. Today, he speaks throughout the world about his personal experiences in the Holocaust, participates every year in the March of the Living and works closely with the Shoah Foundation, Yad Vashem, the From the Depths Foundation and other organizations that preserve the memory of the Holocaust.