Statement edited 6/25 7:00 p.m. to reflect the public correction and apology issued by the World Israel News:

On June 22, 2019, the website “World Israel News” posted an article claiming that I tweeted that “parallels to the 1930s-1940s refugee crisis are so obvious” in response to Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s tweets last week. That claim is a total fabrication. I demanded a public correction and apology, which the World Israel News issued on June 24th (cached link). Please see below for the accurate context for the “parallels” tweet, which had nothing to do with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, and was meant to point out similarities in the intensification of the vetting of people escaping persecution, not to make a Holocaust analogy.

Holocaust analogies are lazy, distracting, insensitive, and incorrect. I have never compared detention camps on the US southern border to Nazi concentration camps. I am a good, careful, and award-winning historian, and this article contained lies and distortions.

[Note, 6/24 11:20am: I have made a correction to my original statement. The WIN article originally claimed that I tweeted the “parallels” statement in response to AOC’s comments last week. This is untrue. Now, without stating that they have made a correction, they changed the article to read that I made that statement in 2018 in response to a Frontline article describing the intensive vetting of refugees. I have gone back through my tweets and found the tweet in question, from January 25, 2018. At the time, it received two “likes” and no retweets, and again, was tweeted from my personal account.]

Rebecca Erbelding

June 23, 2019