The Auschwitz Museum has slammed comments made by former Trump adviser who blamed Jews for their own deportations at the hands of the Nazis.
In a recent speech, Michael Flynn, a Christian nationalist, suggested mothers were complicit in handing over their young children to go on trains to Auschwitz.
He said “Any mother who would be told, ‘Give me your child, give me your baby, we’re going to separate you, we’re not just going to put you into a club coach car. We’re going to stuff you like a sardine into a train.’”
He went on to claim “there weren’t any guards,” implying that Jews could have simply left or said no to Hitler’s soldiers.
A clip of his speech was posted on Twitter and has been viewed over 8 million times.
In a statement posted on Twitter, Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial said: “The assertion that Jews could have easily resisted during deportations to extermination simply due to their numerical strength compared to the guards oversimplifies the dire circumstances they faced.”
Flynn, who lasted 22 days in the White House as a national security adviser to former US President Donald Trump, was speaking at an event in Michigan described as “A Celebration of America’s Freedom and Future.”
It is not the first time Flynn has made headlines for Holocaust denial and antisemitism.
In July 2016 Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign manager suggested that Russians were behind the leak of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails.
In response, Flynn suggested that Jews were blaming Russia to hide their own role in the leak.
He tweeted: “‘The USSR is to blame!’ … Not anymore, Jews. Not anymore,”.
Flynn later said the tweet was a “mistake” and added his “sincerest apologies.”
In December 2016 four Jewish groups joined 53 organisations calling on Trump to rescind Flynn’s nomination as national security adviser.
More recently, in October 2021 Flynn blamed Jews for not saving themselves during the Holocaust.
Speaking at a New Hampshire meet-and-greet for then-U.S. Senate candidate Don Bolduc, he said: “Jesus, how could somebody stand there and just allow these people to do that to them?”
“And then knowing what they knew, how could they get on that train? I would have rather attacked that machine gun nest.”
He likened the vote for US Senate to the dilemma Jews faced, “we are on that train right now,” he said.
