Rep. Warren Davidson becomes the latest GOP lawmaker to compare COVID-19 policies to Nazi Germany

• Davidson reacted to DC’s new order to show vaccination proof and wear masks to some venues.
• He compared it to a Nazi health pass, adding: “Nazis dehumanized Jewish people before segregating them.”
• Reps. Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene were previously slammed for similar comments.

A Republican Party congressman has compared mask and vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany, the latest in a growing number of politicians around the world to do so.

Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio tweeted a picture of a Nazi health document called a “gesundheitspass” on Wednesday, saying the “Nazis dehumanized Jewish people before segregating them.”

Davidson posted the image in response to a tweet from Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington, DC, reminding people they would need to show proof of vaccination and wear masks to enter some city venues from January 15.

—Warren Davidson (@WarrenDavidson) January 12, 2022

The gesundheitspass, meaning “health pass,” was an official Nazi health ministry document that identified a person’s name, age, place of residence, and occupation, but its exact purpose was unclear.

“This has been done before. #DoNotComply,” Davidson wrote.

The American Jewish Committee tweeted Wednesday that likening COVID-19 measures to Nazi-era Germany was becoming a “a disturbing trend” among US lawmakers.

“[Davidson] is the latest elected official to exploit the Holocaust by making immoral and offensive comparisons between vaccine mandates and this dark period of history,” it said.

Replying to Davidson, the Auschwitz Memorial also wrote on Twitter: “Exploiting of the tragedy of all people who between 1933-45 suffered, were humiliated, tortured and murdered by the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany in a debate about vaccines and covid limitations in the time of global pandemic is a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decay.”

A number of other US lawmakers, and some from around the world, have also compared mask, vaccine, or vaccine passports to Nazi Germany.

In August, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky deleted a tweet in which he compared vaccine passports to the Holocaust. Massie posted a photo of a hand tattooed with a number like a prisoner at a Nazi concentration camp.

“If you have to carry a card on you to gain access to a restaurant, venue or an event in your own country that’s no longer a free country,” the image caption said.

In July, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has also compared mask requirements and vaccination efforts to the horrors suffered by Jews in Nazi Germany.

“We can look back in a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany. And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about,” she said during a podcast appearance in May.

Greene apologized for both comparisons and said she had visited the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, to educate herself.