ICYMI: The Jewish Community Relations Council Condemns Holocaust Remarks by Delegate Dan Cox

Today, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Republican Delegate Dan Cox compared a children’s mental health care bill by Del. Heather Bagnall to the genocide of millions by the Nazis, while wearing a mask depicting the Nuremberg Trials. 

Del. Cox was fiercely condemned by the Jewish Community Relations Council, who called his despicable comments, “unconscionable,” and “an insult to thousands of mental health providers.”

Read more about Delegate Dan Cox’s remarks and the widespread condemnation below.

Maryland Matters: On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Lawmaker’s Comments Draw Fire

A Maryland lawmaker who has been a lightning rod for controversy was denounced again on Thursday following a speech on the House floor that sought to tie a mental health care bill to the extermination of 6 million Jews by the Nazis.

Del. Daniel L. Cox’s comments came during Holocaust Remembrance Day, making them especially painful to critics, including a top-ranking lawmaker and a Jewish community leader.

…

Wearing a mask that depicted the Nuremberg Trials that were held following World War II, Cox began by saying that “one of the things that was interesting and very sad in the Nuremberg Trials was the fact that medical professionals interfered with parental rights.”

One outcome of those trials, Cox argued, was passage of the European Commission on Human Rights, “guaranteeing that never again will the state and the health care community interfere with the rights of parents and the right to family — and that’s what this bill does.”

…

Ronald Halber, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, slammed the Republican lawmaker for his remarks.

“To compare the experience of American children seeking mental health services to children who endured unspeakable suffering and torture in concentration camps and other hells created by the Nazi regime is unconscionable,” he said in a statement.

“Jewish children did not receive medical treatment by Nazi doctors — they were victims of gruesome and often deadly medical experiments and other horrific crimes against humanity that were painstakingly documented during the Nuremberg Trials. The children tortured by monsters like Dr. Joseph Mengele were not victimized because their parents lacked ‘parental rights’ — but rather because they were Jews and members of other persecuted minority groups,” he added.”

###