On This Holocaust Remembrance Day, Walz Sullies Memory of Anne Frank

On This Holocaust Remembrance Day, Walz Sullies Memory of Anne Frank
Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
January 26, 2026

The easiest way to lose both credibility and the argument is to weaponize the Holocaust. President Donald J. Trump is not Hitler. Is President Trump responsible for the slaughter of six million Jewish men, women, and children simply because they were Jewish? Of course not. ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents are not the Gestapo. ICE is not a secret police unit rounding up legal citizens for eventual murder. ICE is responsible for apprehending criminal illegal aliens.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D), in an effort to fight the Trump administration has made those very parallels between Trump and Hitler, and between ICE and the Gestapo. On Sunday, January 25, just two days prior to International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Walz went one step farther by weaponizing and denigrating the memory of Anne Frank, a Jewish teenager in hiding with seven other people for more than two years in Amsterdam. Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, is so recognized as the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops.

In his abject ignorance Walz said “we have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank. Somebody’s going to write that children’s story about Minnesota,” Walz moronically concluded during his press conference on Sunday.

Based upon his comments, one may wonder whether Walz ever read The Diary of a Young Girl. In the first place, the Anne Frank diary should not be classified as a “children’s story” when it is a mature-themed accounting of life in hiding from the Nazis who were hell-bent on rounding up every Jew to be murdered. Children hiding in Minneapolis are doing so because of the fear-mongering of Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.

Are the children Walz compared to Frank on the precipice of being murdered? No, they are not. Is their plight remotely as desperate or severe as that of Frank? No, it is not. 

Anne Frank, born June 12, 1929, her sister Margot, born February 16, 1926, their parents Otto and Edith, and four others went into hiding on July 6, 1942 in an attic of an annex to Otto’s business office. Their survival, incumbent upon the goodness and bravery of a precious few willing to risk their own lives for helping Jews, included Miep and Jan Gies. Until the Franks, et al, were betrayed and turned into the Nazis on August 4, 1944 they lived, if it can be called living, knowing any sound could be their end. Upon their capture, they were sent to Auschwitz, a concentration camp where nearly 1.5 million people were slaughtered - 90 percent of them Jewish - gas chambers operating at a capacity of 12,ooo murders per day. Does anyone think Walz knows this history?

Eventually Anne and Margot Frank were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp established in 1943 designed to hold 10,000 prisoners/hostages. By the end of World War II Bergen-Belsen housed about 60,000 prisoners/hostages, the overwhelming majority of whom, murdered by the Nazis, died of starvation and/or typhus. British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen April 15, 1945 - too late for the Frank sisters, both of whom died of typhus. Their exact dates of death are not known, but are estimated to be in February or March of 1945, Anne at age 15, and Margot either at age 18 or 19. May their memories be for a blessing. 

It’s beyond outrageous that Walz, or anyone for that matter, could have the chutzpah to malign the memory of Anne Frank, or any of the eight hidden in the attic for more than two years. Comparing that horrific experience to that which some children in Minnesota are going through - protected by the state and local governments, is an insult to the memories of not just Anne and Margot Frank, but that of the 1.5 million children slaughtered by the Nazis.

Otto Frank, the lone survivor of the eight hidden in the attic/annex, lived to see age 90 - from May 12, 1889 to August 19, 1980. Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, honored Miep Gies and her husband Jan on March 8, 1972 as Righteous Among the Nations. Jan lived from August 18, 1905 to January 26, 1993, while Miep reached 100 - living February 15, 1909 to January 11, 2010. May their memories be for a blessing.

Less than 24 hours after Walz’s insolent and ignorant statements, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum fired off a response. “Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish. Leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable. Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges.”

Walz and Frey are still lead instigators against ICE being in Minnesota doing their job of capturing criminal illegals. Don’t forget, by their mere presence in the United States illegally, they have committed a crime. People in this country without permission have no legal right to be here, nor should they be given anything to encourage them to stay or encourage others to follow suit in crossing the border illegally. A country without borders and an immigration policy can no longer be a sovereign nation. 

Walz and Frey have used terribly incendiary language, turning up the heat to prompt the thousands of protesters in Minneapolis and St. Paul to engage with ICE both verbally and physically. The protesters, many of whom are breaking laws via their non-peaceful protests, are foolishly defending and attempting to protect murderers, rapists, child abusers and traffickers illegally in the United States, mostly because Trump sent ICE there, and thus, they, the protesters, believe they are on the side of right as a juxtaposition to Trump. They are not.

The non-peaceful protesters, such as those who invaded Cities Church in St. Paul on Sunday January 18 (see separate column), and the illegal aliens are all subject to local, state, and federal laws. That Frey and Walz continue to grant them safe harbor, as well as the more than $9 billion in fraud under investigation by the federal government, should be cause enough for both so-called leaders to demonstrate their leadership by resigning from office forthwith. 

Walz and Frey are a major part of the problem that requires ICE to be in Minnesota in the first place. Honest, law abiding citizens of Minnesota, and all 50 of the United States have the right to live freely and safely, in fraud free communities, with the ability to attend church and synagogue unimpeded by atheist, Marxist mobs who believe their rights supersede everyone else's. How wrong those mobs are.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN. He is also a charter member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum located in Washington, DC.

"Whoops" Goldberg Suspended Over Holocaust Remarks

 “Whoops” Goldberg Suspended Over Holocaust Remarks
Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
February 2, 2022

“Let’s be truthful about it, because the Holocaust isn’t about race… It’s about man’s inhumanity to man.” - “Whoopi Goldberg” (Caryn Elaine Johnson) - Monday, January 31, 2022 on The View

That brief statement of insensitive ignorance sparked a firestorm that led ABC News President Kim Godwin to suspend Goldberg for two weeks effective immediately, Tuesday, February 1.

While I remain a vigorous defender of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, words have meaning and words also have consequences. 

Goldberg, who, make no mistake, is not Jewish, has disgraced the Goldberg name with her thoughtless invective, then compounded it, adding, “these are two white groups of people.” Does that lessen the severity of the Holocaust because “these are two white groups of people?” Are six million Jewish people any less dead because they were slaughtered by other white people? That is insanely obtuse of Goldberg to think, let alone utter out loud on national television.

Should the pandemic of Black on Black crime be dismissed because these are two Black groups of people? How about the genocide and slavery of over a million Uyghurs by the Chinese Communist Party? Should that be ignored because these are two Asian groups of people? Of course not - that would be outlandish. And deeply offensive.

On Monday, StopAntisemitism.org posted, “Newsflash @ WhoopiGoldberg 6 million of us were gassed, starved and massacred because we were deemed an inferior race by the Nazis. How dare you minimize our trauma and suffering.”

The Jewish people were defined as a subhuman race by Hitler and the Nazis, subjected to any attrocities and degradation that could possibly be perpetrated against another human being. In reality, the Jewish people can be defined as a race, a religion, a culture, but one rabbi friend said the Jewish people should be considered a family, or a faith community. After all, one need not be born into Judaism to be Jewish, and Jewish people come in numerous colors and nationalities.

The Nazis sought to create a superior race - an Aryan race, as part of Hitler’s so-called Thousand Year Reich, which at 12 years, was already a dozen too many. Such a desire is the epitome of racism - if there is to be a superior race, by definition there is to be an inferior race. Anti-Semitism is a form of racism - against the race of the Semites, the Semitic peoples. Yet, the so-called prevailing wisdom is that the Jewish people are white, assumed to be of means, and therefore cannot be a minority nor should be treated as one. However, rising anti-Semitism both in the United States and abroad, say otherwise. At less than two percent of the American population, and less than one-tenth of one percent of the global population, the Jewish community is the ultimate minority.

And the Jewish community seems to be a minority on The View. Although Barbara Walters, a founder of The View, is Jewish, there hasn’t been a Jewish host on the program since her departure in 2016. Apparently there have only been two Jewish hosts of the more than two dozen in the 25 year history of The View. I don’t believe in affirmative action, therefore, if the best hosts for that program are not Jewish, so be it. Whether it’s the ballfield, the boardroom, or the operating room, I want the best players on the field regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, etc.

Goldberg, who has co-hosted The View since 2007 attempted, rather poorly, to offer a non-apology apology during her appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Monday night. “I feel being Black, when we talk about race, it’s a very different thing to me. So I said that I felt that the Holocaust wasn’t about race. People were very angry and they said ‘no, no, we are a race.’ And I understand - I understand. I felt differently.”

That so-called apology went over like a lead balloon. “Let me use Whoopi’s words ‘let’s be truthful,’ she marginalized the deaths of six million Jews,” said civil rights attorney Leo Terrell, appearing on The Faulkner Focus on Tuesday, February 1. “And what makes it insulting is that she provided cover for those who are anti-Semitic; those who really try to downplay that the Nazis systematically tried to eliminate every Jew on this planet…. She’s using her race as a cover. Whoopi Goldberg apparently missed World History class in high school.

“I feel, as a Black man, as a civil rights attorney, and as a history teacher, that what she said was anti-Semitic, racist, and downplayed that six million people were murdered…. It’s an attempt to ignore what happened [80] years ago. This world should never forget that a madman tried to eliminate a religious group off the face of this earth,” said Terrell.

Hate speech, ignorant speech, should be combated with more speech, not less. Shine a bright light on people’s words and let viewers or listeners decide whether or not they choose to watch or listen any longer. Those same people will also decide whether or not to patronize the advertisers of such programs. Advertisers should be judged upon the company they keep. Do I wish to patronize a business that de facto supports the words (or actions) of ignorance, hate, racism or anti-Semitism being spewed? 

“Jewish Americans like myself are used to this,” said former State Department spokesperson and United States Navy veteran Morgan Ortagus, also appearing on Harris Faulkner’s program on Tuesday. “It’s quite sad - one in four Jews have said in the past year they have experienced some form of anti-Semitism. We’ve seen this from some very radical leftist members of Congress.

“The bigger picture here too, which everyone is missing, is that not only did Hitler exterminate the Jews in the Holocaust because he believed they were an inferior race, newsflash to everyone - not all Jews are white - you should go to Israel. You should see the fact that there are Jews from around the world - all colors - complete ignorance about the Jewish people - it’s incredibly offensive - lines up with the leftist agenda towards Jews and America, but broader to Israel as well.

“We look at the UN - at their resolutions condemning various countries around the world, last year, guess who got 14 condemnations? It was Israel. North Korea got one. Iran, the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, got one. Just last week swastikas were painted on Union Station steps away from the US Capital. This is a continuing, rampant problem. 

“Unfortunately, Whoopi Goldberg stepped into it… in a way that perpetuated lies about the Jewish people that we’ve heard for decades. Specifically, those lies were rampant during the Holocaust. I’m glad she apologized, but I think it just speaks to a broader need for people to really understand how Jews - American Jews - are being targeted by leftist institutions.”

Ortagus is absolutely correct. Overt anti-Semitism has been on the rise for decades in the US and abroad. Those attacks have come in the form of desecration at synagogues - including mine in Carmel, IN, repeated assaults on religious Jewish men and women in New York City and the surrounding area, as well as gun violence that has claimed almost 20 lives in just over three years.

Just three weeks ago, on January 15, Shabbat services were disrupted by a gunman who held four hostages for about 12 hours at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, TX near Dallas.

December 11, 2019 two gunmen slaughtered four people in and near a kosher grocery in Jersey City, NJ. One of the murdered included Jersey City Detective Joseph Seals.

April 27, 2019 a gunman invaded the Chabad in Poway, CA near San Diego during Shabbat services murdering one congregant and wounding three others, including the rabbi.

October 27, 2018 in the worst attack on the Jewish community in United States history, a gunman violated Shabbat services at the Tree of Life Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA. Eleven congregants were slaughtered and six others were wounded, including four police officers.

Countless anti-Semitic attacks have been heard coming from Washington, DC as House members Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) among others have brazenly, verbally assaulted the Jewish community and Israel with tired old tropes. They, like Goldberg, have displayed their ignorance, which is horrific, yet not surprising. And the new shtick by anti-Semites is to couch their anti-Semitism by hiding behind the guise of anti-Zionsim - opposing the existence of the State of Israel. To be fair, one can oppose policy in Israel and not be an anti-Semite. One can oppose the opinions of a Jewish person and also not be an anti-Semite. I disagree with virtually everything coming out of the mouths of US Rep. Bernie Sanders (S-VT) and US Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and certainly does not make me an anti-Semite.

Whoopi Goldberg may or may not be an anti-Semite - I don’t know her, nor do I know what is in her heart. Clearly we now know what is or is not in her brain as stated on The “Dim” View. On Tuesday, February 1, Goldberg began The View with a more well-crafted apology than offered on Colbert’s show the night before. “It is indeed about race because Hitler and the Nazis considered Jews to be an inferior race. Words matter, and mine are no exception. I regret my comments and I stand corrected. I also stand with the Jewish people as they know, and y’all know - because I’ve always done that.”

In spite of that apology, ABC News President Kim Godwin did the right thing by giving Goldberg a two week timeout. “Effective immediately, I am suspending Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for her wrong and hurtful comments. While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments. The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities.”

While that apology has been accepted by many in the Jewish community, some still call for Goldberg to be fired. I support free speech and Goldberg’s right to say stupid, insensitive, and offensive things. I also support ABC and its right to make personnel decisions that are best for its company and its bottom line.

As a Charter Member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in our nation’s capital, I invite, and strongly encourage Whoopi Goldberg to visit the museum and truly learn about the Holocaust. Bring friends, Ms. Goldberg it’s free and open to the public six days a week - closed Wednesdays, Yom Kippur, and Christmas. For more information visit www.ushmm.org. 

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN and has been a Charter Member of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum since its founding in 1993.

Dr. Carson Takes a Shot at Gun Control

Dr. Carson Takes a Shot at Gun Control

Commentary by Sanford D. Horn

October 9, 2015

Playing the Holocaust card is always risky – even more so when coupled with an issue as overly divisive as guns and gun control – precisely what Republican presidential hopeful Dr. Benjamin Carson did with recent comments.

Proving the liberal media’s double standard, Carson’s comments following the slaughter on the campus of Umpqua Community College near Roseburg, OR on October 1 was lambasted, while those of Barack Obama were applauded. Obama, on the day of the Oregon tragedy, before the deceased were even identified, called, as per his usual, for increased gun control legislation and vowed to visit the campus. When one criticism was actually offered, that Obama was politicizing the catastrophe, he definitively said that he was and would continue to do so.

Main stream liberal media supported Obama, yet castigated Carson who said if he had been on the Oregon campus he would have rushed the shooter, noting that the shooter would not be able to kill everybody and that many lives could have been saved. The fact that the Umpqua campus along with so many others are considered “Gun Free Zones,” makes all people attending, working, and visiting these colleges sitting ducks, opined Carson, an opinion supported by many. Apparently the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is superseded by university rules – and public schools at that, for the most part.

But perhaps what others have considered more incendiary remarks from Carson concern the Holocaust of European Jewry that saw six million Jews systematically murdered by the dictatorial Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler during World War II.

Carson’s comments were not the result of the shooting on the Umpqua campus, but long before, in print in his latest book, A More Perfect Union. In his tome Carson writes that “through a combination of removing guns and disseminating propaganda, the Nazis were able to carry out their evil intentions with relatively little resistance.”

In a recent interview with CNN, Carson was asked to clarify his thoughts on equating gun control laws with the slaughter of six million Jews.

“I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed. I’m telling you, there is a reason these dictatorial people take guns first,” said Carson.

Carson’s invocation of the Holocaust was not meant to be salacious, but to make a point about gun control – a correct point, that gun control is about government control of the people.

Carson’s view on the history is somewhat simplistic – it was not as black and white a picture as he attempts to paint. The Weimar Republic that preceded Hitler had instituted gun registration laws, upon which Hitler, when taking office, capitalized on that legislation to strip Jews and other so-called enemies of the state of their firearms. Additionally, the age in which people lived in the pre-World War II era – the reparations following World War I which influenced Hitler’s thought process, as well as the abject poverty due to the economic depression that followed, gave birth to a climate making Hitler’s rise to power possible, and to some, necessary.

But just as important was the ability to capture the hearts and minds of the German population – 60 million strong. “All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach,” wrote Hitler. (Of course had 21^st Century technology and 24-hour news cycles existed in the 1930s, Hitler would have unlikely approached the genocide for which he was responsible.)

Hitler appealed to the low hanging fruit, understanding that to rile up the mostly anti-Semitic, or at the very least ambivalent masses, would garner him support to sign the Gun Control Act in 1938 prohibiting Jews from working in the firearms industry as well as surrendering what firearms they initially owned. Thanks to the gun registration laws of the Weimar days, the police/Gestapo had records of Jewish gun owners. Jews had heretofore already been banned from receiving gun permits.

There is support that Carson’s suggestion regarding gun control making it easier for Hitler to follow through on his heinous machinations has merit.

Yet, Carson was criticized by Jonathan Greenblatt, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League. Greenblatt called Carson’s suggestion “that Hitler’s gun control policy contributed to the Holocaust is historically inaccurate…. The small number of personal firearms available to Germany’s Jews in 1938 could in no way have stopped the totalitarian power of the Nazi German state.”

I think that last statement by Greenblatt actually supports Carson’s assertion about gun control affecting the ability of the small Jewish population of Germany to defend itself and at least diminish the effects of the Nazi regime.

Consider the evidence of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Here, a couple of small bands of Jews staved off the Nazis from liquidating the Warsaw Ghetto, not for the three days the Nazis expected the task to take, but for a month. From April 19, the eve of Passover, until May 16, 1943, these rag-tag undermanned and certainly under armed Jews fought the Nazis until they simply could not fight any longer as building after building was razed. And while the Warsaw Ghetto was reduced to ash and rubble and its inhabitants ultimately deported to death camps or murdered on the spot, firearms kept the Jews alive for as long as they did. Gun control would have seen the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto sooner rather than later.

In the United States the Second Amendment to the Constitution is to protect the people from the government, not the converse. “When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” So wrote Thomas Jefferson.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.