A 90-year-old Holocaust survivor has compared the language used in Donald Trump's immigration crackdown to that used against Jews during the Nazi era, saying he sees 'the ghost of Adolf Hitler' standing behind the US president during his speeches.
Steven Frank, who survived near-starvation in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, drew parallels between US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and 'Hitler's brown shirts' as they detain people on the streets. Speaking ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day, he warned: 'History is beginning to repeat itself again.'
Frank, whose father and five other relatives were murdered in the Holocaust, told The Mirror that the language used in Trump's immigration crackdown is similar to that used against Jews. 'In America they were saying these people are druggies and they are 'poisoning our people', it's a similar sort of thing and people have got to realise history is beginning to repeat itself again.'
He criticised the scenes in Minnesota, where officers have been involved in two fatal shootings while carrying out immigration enforcement. 'I see the ghost of Adolf Hitler looming in the background there, suddenly coming out of the darkness,' he said. 'It's this hatred of a group of people because they're not Americans by birth. And I sort of think to myself, the only reason that America was great before was because of all the immigrants that they let in. People who made the country what it was.'
Frank, whose mother was English, grew up in Amsterdam before the war. He recalled the day in 1942 when his father kissed his family goodbye and never returned, having been betrayed, arrested, tortured and transported to Auschwitz, where he was gassed in January 1943. Frank, his mother and brothers survived against all odds, enduring the horrors of Theresienstadt.
Frank was photographed by the Princess of Wales to mark the liberation of Auschwitz, who described him as one of the most 'life-affirming people' she had ever met. He now worries about the state of the world and the parallels with the past.
