The U.S. Holocaust Museum sharply criticized comments made by Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) in which he likened the impact of federal immigration enforcement in his state to the experiences of Anne Frank.
The Holocaust Museum said in an X post Monday that the events in Minnesota and the systematic extermination of Jewish people in the Holocaust are inherently different.
“Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish. Leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable,” the museum said in a statement. “Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges.”
In a Sunday press conference, Walz dramatized the fear felt by immigrant families and children amid DHS’s Operation Metro Surge.
The federal enforcement effort has drawn national attention after the fatal shootings of ICU nurse Alex Pretti and Renee Good, both of whom were American citizens.
Walz invoked The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and said a similar story will be written about the lives of Minnesotan children.
“Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank,” Walz said, warning that children in Minnesota were now “hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside.”
“Somebody’s going to write that children’s story about Minnesota,” Walz said.
Anne Frank, a Jewish teenager, chronicled her life in hiding from the Nazis in the Netherlands during World War II before her capture and death in a concentration camp.
The Holocaust Museum’s mission includes confronting hatred and preventing genocide through education and remembrance of the murder of 6 million Jews and millions of other victims at the hands of Nazi Germany.
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During the press conference, Walz also praised Minnesotans’ protests against immigration enforcement presence and repeated his demands to President Donald Trump to terminate ICE and Border Patrol presence in the state.
As tensions have grown, Trump said he spoke with Walz in an effort to mediate the crisis and push for cooperation between state and federal enforcement.