Lara Logan, a host on Fox News’ streaming platform, has been denounced by several prominent Jewish organizations and the Auschwitz Museum after she compared White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci to Josef Mengele, a Nazi doctor who conducted experiments on Jewish extermination camp prisoners during the Holocaust.
“Exploiting the tragedy of people who became victims of criminal pseudo-medical experiments in Auschwitz in a debate about vaccines, pandemic and people who fight for saving human lives is shameful,” Poland’s Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Memorial said Tuesday in a Twitter statement. “It is disrespectful to victims & a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline.”
The American Jewish Committee said the comments were “utterly shameful” and noted that Mengele earned his “Angel of Death” moniker by performing deadly experiments on Auschwitz prisoners, including many children.
Agree or not with Fauci, comparing him to “history’s most sadistic medical experimenter is beyond vile,” said David Harris, the CEO of the committee.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said there’s “absolutely no comparison between COVID-19 mitigation efforts and what happened to Jews during the Holocaust.”
“This includes making outlandish analogies suggesting Dr. Fauci is akin to Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele, known for his gruesome medical experiments on prisoners,” he added.
During an appearance Monday evening on “Fox News Primetime,” Logan, who has a show on the Fox Nation streaming service, spread misinformation about COVID-19 and claimed without evidence that “people all across the world” were saying that Fauci doesn’t represent science but instead represents Mengele because of his role in the approval of coronavirus pandemic mandates.
Fox News did not immediately return a request for comment.
Holocaust comparisons have become a common theme in anti-vaccination and anti-mandate circles, putting Jewish advocacy and history organizations in the position of having to repeatedly speak out. Some prominent vaccination critics have worn yellow stars to liken their situation ― being encouraged to get vaccinated in order to participate in certain aspects of society ― to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews during the Holocaust.
Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, has been demonized by right-wingers throughout the pandemic for making science-informed recommendations, which have evolved with newer information, on COVID-19 restrictions and vaccines. The attacks have intensified amid concerns over the emerging omicron variant.
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