It doesn’t matter who you are, the news coming from the border is disturbing. It’s a terrible thing when children are separated from parents regardless of the cause or regardless of the fault of the parents. Does this really need to be said?

But Denver City Councilwoman Mary Beth Susman has taken this to new heights (lows?) in comparing this situation to the Holocaust. In doing so, she not only misrepresents the issue, but, more importantly, trivializes the death and torture that the Holocaust brought to millions of Jewish people.

Here’s the exchange with Susman on her Facebook page:

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One Jewish woman whose family experienced the Holocaust first-hand had this to say about the comparisons:

“My father z”l was in a forced labor camp where he was starved and beaten daily, and pistol-whipped when he was too weak to work. The work? Dragging boulders up a hill. My grandfather and Uncle Richard were shot to death by Jew-hating Hungarian Nazis. My uncle was a child when he was murdered. My father was on a death march before he was liberated. You know why all this happened? Because they were Jewish.

“That’s not this. That’s not in the same universe as this. Don’t you dare compare this to that.”

We can talk about how challenging this situation is without invoking the Holocaust, which was a totally different thing than what’s happening here. Susman is out of line and owes her Jewish constituents an apology.