Former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn Slammed for Demeaning Auschwitz Remarks

Video footage of former US President Donald Trump’s one-time national security adviser suggesting that Jews who were deported to the Auschwitz concentration could have easily resisted their Nazi persecutors went viral this week, reinforcing fears that antisemitism is increasingly a feature of right-wing nationalist discourse as the country approaches the 2024 presidential election.

Michael Flynn — who was forced to resign after just three weeks as Trump’s national security adviser in 2017, following revelations that he lied to senior administration figures over his contacts with the then Russian Ambassador in Washington, DC, — uttered the offending comments during an Aug. 4 Christian nationalist rally in Michigan.

Describing a visit to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, Flynn recalled a conversation he had with his tour guide in which he pressed him to explain why Jews did not resist the Nazis upon arrival, given their numerical superiority over the camp guards.

“So tell me, what were the rules for the guards?” Flynn said he had asked, before falsely asserting “because there wasn’t (sic) any guards.”

Flynn continued: “But there were thousands of people. Thousands, thousands of people. Maybe they’re members of your congregation. Maybe it’s you. That just said, ‘ok, here’s my child,’ and get on the train.”

In the same address, Flynn said he had been “bothered” by the realization that a mother would be willing to hand over her child to the Nazis. “We’re gonna separate you,” he said. “We’re not just gonna put you into, you know, a club coach car, right, where’s there’s buffet service, we’re gonna stuff like you like a sardine into a train.”

Responding to Flynn’s false claims about the Holocaust, the Auschwitz Memorial Museum in Poland said that 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.”

It added: “Upon reaching Auschwitz, Jews were met with armed SS guards at platforms and later, within the confines of Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp itself, surrounded by electrified barbed-wire fences. The sheer number of SS guards made resistance nearly impossible. Additionally, the presence of German police and military units nearby was a threat to any uprising.”

The statement noted too that “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 emotional toll on the victims often led to feelings of hopelessness and the desire to end their suffering as quickly as possible.”

The remarks echoed similar comments spoken by Flynn at an Oct. 2021 rally supporting Don Bolduc, a pro-Trump candidate in New Hampshire who failed in his bid for election to the US Senate. “Jesus, how could somebody stand there and just allow these people to do that to them?” Flynn said. “And then knowing what they knew, how could they get on that train? I would have rather attacked that machine gun nest.”

Flynn has also toyed with openly antisemitic comments in the past, tweeting “‘The USSR is to blame!’ … Not anymore, Jews. Not anymore,” in response to Democratic Party claims that Russia had orchestrated the leak of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails in July 2016. He later apologized for the post.

ReAwaken America — Flynn’s campaigning vehicle which aggressively pushes the falsehood that the 2022 presidential election was rigged against Trump — argues that the US should be solely a Christian nation and that Islam should be regarded as an active threat.

“If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion,” Flynn told a Nov. 2021 rally. “One nation under God, and one religion under God.”

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