Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) has repeatedly turned to the 1930s in search of potential analogs for those people and actions today that he finds disagreeable.
Walz smeared, for example, Holocaust survivor Jerry Wartski and the tens of thousands of other Americans who attended a campaign event for President Donald Trump in October 2024, comparing them to the Nazis who rallied at the location in February 1939.
‘Her story has nothing to do with the illegal immigration, fraud, and lawlessness plaguing Minnesota today.’
Walz claimed on May 17, 2025, that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — which was active during his former running mate’s tenure as vice president as well as during the Obama administration — was “Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo.”
In the wake of 37-year-old Alex Pretti’s fatal shooting by a federal immigration agent on Saturday, Walz once again went in search of a damning reference. This time, he likened Minnesota children whose streets are being cleared of violent criminal noncitizens to Jews in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands who were faced with systematized mass murder.
After further vilifying federal immigration agents and reiterating his demand that ICE leave the Gopher State, Walz said during a press conference on Sunday, “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,” added Walz. “And there’s one person who can end this now.”
Photographer: Jack Califano/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Anne Frank was a Jewish German girl whose family attempted to hide from Nazi forces in the secret annex of an Amsterdam residence. After two years of hiding, the family was captured after the Sicherheitspolizei raided the location in concert with Dutch police. Frank was taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, where she and her sister died in 1945. Her father, Otto, survived Auschwitz, then later saw to the publication of Anne Frank’s diary.
Critics have suggested Walz’s comparison is indefensible.
Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, the U.S. State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, tweeted, “Ignorance like this cheapens the horror of the Holocaust. Anne Frank was in Amsterdam legally and abided by Dutch law. She was hauled off to a death camp because of her race and religion. Her story has nothing to do with the illegal immigration, fraud, and lawlessness plaguing Minnesota today.”
“Our brave law enforcement should be commended, not tarred with this historically illiterate and antisemitic comparison,” added the rabbi.
Republican Rep. Randy Fine (Fla.) said that “comparing the removal of illegal immigrants to the Holocaust is antisemitic and repulsive.”
Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Jewish American activist and political commentator at PragerU, wrote, “One million Jewish children were killed during the Holocaust. Illegal immigrants are offered thousands of dollars to take a free flight home. Tim Walz is an evil retard.”
The White House’s rapid response account said that Walz is a “truly disturbed, unstable individual.”
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Anne frank, Holocaust, Genocide, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Tim walz, Walz, Immigration, Federal agents, Us immigration and customs enforcement, Ice, Alex pretti, Politics
