A Republican lawmaker is coming under criticism for recording videos at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, including a segment filmed inside the Nazi gas chambers and crematorium.
“This is why homeland security must be squared away, why our military must be invincible,” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) declared as he stood in front of ovens used to cremate prisoners.
The clip was posted online by NOLA.com.
The Auschwitz‑Birkenau Memorial and Museum wrote on Twitter that Higgins shouldn’t have used the scene of so many murders as a “stage.”
Higgins, a former police officer who now sits on the House Homeland Security Committee, made headlines last month when he wrote on Facebook that “all of Christendom... is at war with Islamic horror” and called for killing any “radicalized Islamic suspect.”
“Every conceivable measure should be engaged to hunt them down,” he wrote. “Hunt them, identify them, and kill them. Kill them all.”
In his video at Auschwitz, recorded at different locations around the memorial, Higgins warned that Americans could face a fate similar to those killed in the Nazi death camp.
He said:
“The world’s a smaller place now than it was in World War II. The United States is more accessible to terror like this, horror like this. It’s hard to walk away from gas chambers and ovens without a very sober feeling of commitment, unwavering commitment, to make damn sure that the United States of America is protected from the evils of the world. ”
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says close to 1 million Jews and 125,000 others ― including Poles, Roma and Soviets ― were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau.