The Auschwitz Museum has criticized Irish politician Matthew McGrath for comparing COVID-19 certificates to Nazi Germany.
"There are huge correlations. It's exactly the same if you want to study it – exactly the same – restriction of movements, couldn't go where they wanted to go, treated like..." he said, not completing his thought.
"I'm comparing what went on in early Germany – the people had such fear and that's what happened – so I am comparing, yeah," the Tipperary TD (assembly delegate) said. "That's for me to compare and for anyone else who wants to read history, [to] make their own decisions on it."
Speaking in the Dáil, the lower house of Parliament, Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheál Martin asked McGrath to "refrain from his frequent use of language" like "Nazis" and "totalitarianism."
"You consistently make ridiculous assertions in this house that insult and are offensive to people," Martin said.
"Do you understand what Nazism is about, do you understand what the Holocaust was about?" the Fianna Fáil (Republican) Party leader asked.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin has asked Tipperary TD Mattie McGrath to 'refrain from his frequent use of language' like 'Nazis' and 'totalitarianism' when describing Covid-19 measures, saying the comparison is insulting and offensive to people | Read more: https://t.co/eGUxxEjcpb pic.twitter.com/m6qdDpb8fB
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) July 13, 2021
In the tweet, the Auschwitz Museum gives the parliamentarian a history lesson. "Instrumentation of the tragedy of all people who between 1933-45 suffered, were humiliated, tortured & murdered by the hateful totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany to argue against vaccination that saves human lives is a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline," the museum's account said.