Sessions: We’re Not Like The Nazis Because They Tried To Keep Jews From Leaving
Image by Getty Images
By Aiden Pink June 19, 2018
Attorney General Jeff Sessions criticized the growing number of public comparisons between the Trump administration’s new immigration policies and Nazi Germany, saying that such claims are not true because the Nazis were “keeping the Jews from leaving the country.”
More than 2,000 children have been separated from their parents at border crossings and placed in detention centers, according to the Department of Homeland Security. But even as Holocaust survivors as well as Democratic politicians drew parallels between World War II and today, Sessions rejected the comparison in an interview on Fox News on Monday.
“Well, it’s a real exaggeration, of course. In Nazi Germany, they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country,” Sessions said. “We need to think it through, be rational and thoughtful about it. We want to allow asylum for people who qualify for it, but people who want economic migration for their personal financial benefit, and what they think is their families’ benefit, is not a basis for a claim of asylum.”
Sessions’s claim that the Nazis kept the Jews from leaving elides the fact that the Nazis did deport roughly 17,000 Jews from Germany to Poland in 1938, and that they contemplated forcibly moving the entire European Jewish population to Madagascar.
Sessions went on to admit that the point of the new policy was to deter further illegal immigration.
“I see that the fact that no one was being prosecuted for this as a factor in a five-fold increase in four years in this kind of illegal immigration,” he said. “So, yes, hopefully, people will get the message and come through the border at the port of entry, and not break across the border unlawfully.”
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink
Hello, fellow Forward reader! I’m Joel Brown, a Forward reader and supporter for more than 15 years, and currently the chair of the board of directors.
I’m an avid Forward reader because it ticks so many of my essential boxes: excellent journalism, Jewish focus and diverse viewpoints. In today’s political climate, what I most appreciate is the Forward’s independence — made possible by the generosity of its membership.
The Forward is committed to bringing you unbiased, nuanced Jewish news. From my position as board chair, I see an exciting future as we expand our position as the definitive independent voice of contemporary American Judaism.
That’s why I’m paying it Forward, by matching $36,000 of reader gifts. It’s an investment in the Forward’s newsroom, to continue telling the American Jewish story with truth and independence.
— Joel Brown, Forward board chair
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
