In response to a July 20 letter admonishing commentary writer Ahmed Tharwat ("Trump drops pretense in a racist America," July 16) and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for using the term "concentration camp" to refer to the, uh, concentration camps at our border with Mexico: As the descendant of Holocaust victims and survivors, I wholeheartedly support invoking this term to refer to these camps. Indeed, it's a lesson from history, and a whisper from those who died, urging us to not let this happen again, this time on American soil.
Although the refugees currently being held are not being intentionally murdered, children, women and men have already died due to the camps' unhealthy conditions, a lack of medical care and neglect. Children are ill, kept in dirty diapers; people don't have enough to eat or clean water (in the blazing Texas summer); and supplies for basic hygiene are not provided. The refugees are kept as animals, in conditions that have given rise to "rescue" organizations for animals.
In addition, parents and children who are separated from one another, some as young as babies, are traumatized, frightened and left wondering if they will ever see their families again, similar to families separated in Nazi concentration camps. Their pain is no different.
And be clear: Nazi concentration camps didn't spring up in a day; they were the culmination of years of political and cultural dehumanization of Jews, Roma, people with disabilities, LGBTQ and others. The Trump administration and its active and complicit supporters are engaging in the same kind of dehumanization of Central American refugees — through words, policies, and in the running of these camps. A parent who has lost their child in these squalid concentration camps has to live with the same grief, helplessness and horror that my people did under the Nazis. The use of the term "concentration camp" is entirely appropriate and a moral calling to all of us.
Donna Greenberg Koren, West St. Paul
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Regarding the letter opining that the camps where refugees seeking asylum in the U.S. have been placed are not concentration camps: Indeed, the best known concentration camps were those operated by the Nazis during the Holocaust. However, Merriam-Webster defines concentration camps as "places where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard." This is precisely what the U.S. government has built in multiple places along the southern U.S. border.
In fact, this is not the first time the U.S. government forced people into concentration camps on U.S. soil. During World War II, more than 100,000 U.S. residents of Japanese descent were taken from their homes and placed in concentration camps. Before that, during its campaign to wipe out American Indian people, the U.S. government forced some 300,000 American Indians into concentration camps.
Further, contrary to what the letter writer asserted, neither Tharwat nor Ocasio-Cortez have suggested or stated that the concentration camps at our border are "like those in Nazi Germany."
