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GOP lawmaker retracts Auschwitz video

by Olivia Beavers - 07/05/17 4:37 PM ET

A Republican lawmaker has removed from public view a controversial video he filmed inside a former gas chamber at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

The video, which showed Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) offering his reflections as he toured the Nazi camp, had drawn an immediate backlash after it came to public light this week.

“My Auschwitz video has been removed, and my sincere apology for any unintended pain is extended,” Higgins wrote in a statement.

{mosads}The Louisiana lawmaker explained that he intended to pay “homage to those who were murdered in Auschwitz” with his video, but he decided to remove it after realizing it had “caused pain.”

“I filmed the Auschwitz message with great humility. My intent was to offer a reverent homage to those who were murdered in Auschwitz and to remind the world that evil exists, that free nations must remember, and stand strong,” Higgins said in part.

“However, my message has caused pain to some whom I love and respect. For that, my own heart feels sorrow. Out of respect to any who may feel that my video posting was wrong or caused pain, I have retracted my video.”

Officials with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum and The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect had condemned the video as disrespectful.

The Anne Frank Center on Wednesday slammed the GOP lawmaker, calling his action “a global disgrace” and pointing out that he failed to mention Jewish people or the Holocaust in the video.

The video shows Higgins walking outside the camp, where train tracks took more than 1 million to their deaths, as well as to buildings inside it, including a gas chamber. It closes with an image of Higgins in a cowboy hat and sheriff’s uniform, his head bowed, against a backdrop of the American and Israeli flags.

In his statement, Higgins said he stands with the Jewish people.

“The atrocities that happened at Auschwitz were truly despicable, and we must never let history repeat itself in such a way. I have always stood with Israel and all Jewish people, and I always will. We live in a dangerous world, and massive forces of evil do indeed yet exist. We must all stand united against those evils,” he continued.

In the video, Higgins had used the atrocities in the concentration camp as an example of why the U.S. military “must be invincible.”

“The world’s a smaller place now than it was in World War II,” Higgins said in the almost five-minute video. “The United States is more accessible to terror like this, horror like this.”

Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum officials also called the video disrespectful, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

“Everyone has the right to personal reflections. However, inside a former gas chamber, there should be mournful silence. It’s not a stage,” the museum’s main Twitter account said, linking Higgins’s video.

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