Jewish Community Outraged by Maryland State Delegate’s Offensive Remarks on Holocaust Remembrance Day

Washington, DC - April 8, 2021 - Executive Director of The Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of Greater Washington, Ron Halber, today issued the following statement following offensive and hurtful remarks made by Maryland State Delegate Daniel Cox on Holocaust Remembrance Day when he attempted to compare a bill that would allow children to seek mental health treatment to the horrors of the Holocaust: 

“Today is Yom Ha'Shoah, the sacred day when the Jewish community mourns the murder of six million Jews, including one million children, at the hands of the Nazi killing machine. We are outraged and hurt that on this day, an official elected to represent the people of Maryland chose to cheapen the memory of the Holocaust in order to score a political point.

To compare the experience of American children seeking mental health services to children who endured unspeakable suffering and torture in concentration camps and other hells created by the Nazi regime is unconscionable. Jewish children did not receive medical treatment by Nazi doctors—they were victims of gruesome and often deadly medical experiments and other horrific crimes against humanity that were painstakingly documented during the Nuremberg Trials. The children tortured by monsters like Dr. Joseph Mengele were not victimized because their parents lacked “parental rights”—but rather because they were Jews and members of other persecuted minority groups.

Delegate Cox’s words are an insult to the thousands of mental health providers throughout the State of Maryland and are part of a disturbing pattern of public officials using Holocaust and Nazi analogies for political ends. The JCRC calls on the Maryland House of Delegates to condemn this offensive comparison and to hold Delegate Cox responsible for his reprehensible remarks on this sacred day. Let us return our focus to mourning the victims of the Holocaust: May the memories of the six million be a blessing and may we never again know the pain of unstopped hatred and genocide.”