Former Trump adviser blames Jews for dying in Auschwitz

Former Donald Trump adviser Michael Flynn blamed the Jews for the deaths of all the children who died in the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust.

Speaking at an event in Michigan at the beginning of August, clips of which have gone viral over social media, Flynn, recounting a trip of his to Auschwitz, said that mothers "willingly" gave their children over to the Nazis' trains to be shipped off to Auschwitz. 

Flynn said that mothers would have essentially let their children be packed into the trains "like a sardine."

Describing his trip to Auschwitz, Mike Flynn blames the Jews for being exterminated in WWII because there were “thousands of them and not many guards” and the Jews willingly went along with the Nazis: “OK here’s my child and got on the train.”Someone put this Nazi in prison. pic.twitter.com/GQ9XSeyoEz

— Jim Stewartson, Anti-disinfo activist (@jimstewartson) August 12, 2023

"Early on, they really didn't know, they thought they were being taken out of war zones to be taken care of, and then it didn't take long before the word got out because people started to escape," the former US national security advisor said. "They started to realize, 'Hey, they're actually taking you there, and they're doing some really sick things.'"

Flynn then said he asked "a very, very astute historian" who was walking with him about the rules for the guards, "because there weren't any guards, but there were thousands of people... that just said 'Okay, here's my child,' and got on the train. Talk about being in the valley of the shadow of death."

The former general's remarks were just some of a longer speech that included other controversial statements, such as talking about how the Bible would be rewritten by artificial intelligence. However, his words about the Holocaust sparked backlash from the Auschwitz Memorial Museum in Poland, which described the flaws behind Flynn's accounts.

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 during the Holocaust. Acts of resistance did occur in various forms across… https://t.co/2pmUPU9Atp

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) August 13, 2023

"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 during the Holocaust," the memorial said, noting that while there were acts of resistance in Nazi-ruled areas, there were a number of factors at play, such as German deception and propagandas and, once at the heavily fortified camps themselves, "the sheer number of SS guards made resistance nearly impossible." 

"The skepticism surrounding the stories of death camps is understandable, considering the unprecedented nature of the Holocaust. We can't expect people at that time to fully grasp the extent of the horrors they faced, especially given the manipulative tactics of the Nazis," the memorial said, adding: "Blaming the victims for not resisting more distorts history as it ignores the bigger picture and contexts of the complex and challenging situation they were in and the oppression they faced. Rejecting these kinds of narration is vital because it unfairly shifts the blame from the perpetrators to the people who suffered."

Michael Flynn's history of Holocaust distortion and antisemitism

This is not the first time Flynn has sparked backlash for both Holocaust distortion and perceived antisemitism. 

In 2022, Flynn compared supporters of the US far-right with the victims of the Holocaust and also said that the Jews should have resisted more against being sent on the trains to Auschwitz. 

Again recounting a visit to the concentration camp and noting a machine gun nest at the end of the train tracks, he said that he thought to himself: "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."

At a 2021 rally, Flynn came under fire after calling for the US to have just one religion.