Auschwitz Gas Chamber Video Earns Rebuke For Louisiana Lawmaker
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Image by youtube
A Louisiana congressman is under fire after filming a five-minute video in and around a gas chamber at Auschwitz in he which he discussed the Holocaust and the need for America to maintain a strong national defense.
“The world’s a smaller place now than it was in World War II. The United States is more accessible to terror like this, horror like this,” said Clay Higgins, a Republican who represents a district stretching along the state’s southern coast, in the video. He cited the Holocaust as evidence that “homeland security must be squared away, why our military must be invincible.”
His video earned condemnation on the Web and from the authorities who operate the Auschwitz site.
“Everyone has the right to personal reflections. However, inside a former gas chamber, there should be mournful silence. It’s not a stage,” wrote the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum on Twitter. It also pointed that a sign near the gas chamber encourages visitors to remain silent.
Posting selfies and videos from Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps has become increasingly common in recent years — and has provoked strong reaction from Jewish and other groups.
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
