Auschwitz Museum condemns RFK Jr. for invoking Anne Frank at anti-mandate rally

The Auschwitz Museum denounced Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sunday, after he compared vaccine mandates and passports to the Holocaust.

Kennedy spoke at a "Defeat the Mandates" rally in Washington, D.C., sharing conspiracy theories about 5G and digital currency to a crowd of thousands. "Even in Hitler's Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in the attic like Anne Frank did," he said. "Mechanisms are being put in place so that none of us can run and none of us can hide."

Within five years, Kennedy continued, "we're going to see 415,000 low-orbit satellites. Bill Gates says his 65,000 satellites alone will be able to look at every square inch of the planet 24 hours a day. They're putting in 5G to harvest our data and control our behavior. Digital currency that will allow them to punish us from a distance and cut off our food supply."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

During World War II, Anne Frank, her parents and sister, and four other Jewish people hid from the Nazis in a secret annex in Amsterdam. After being betrayed, they were all sent to concentration camps, with only Frank's father, Otto, surviving. Anne Frank first went to Auschwitz, and was later sent to Bergen-Belsen, where she died at 15, not long before the camp was liberated.

The Auschwitz Memorial responded to Kennedy's remarks on Twitter, saying, "Exploiting the tragedy of people who suffered, were humiliated, tortured, and murdered by the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany — including children like Anne Frank — in a debate about vaccines and limitations during global pandemic is a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decay."