The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum issued a sharp response after Minnesota Governor Tim Walz compared the fear felt by some children in Minnesota to the experience of Holocaust diarist Anne Frank.
Walz, 61, made the remarks during a press conference on Sunday, Jan. 25, after the fatal shooting of ICU nurse Alex Pretti by federal officers.
“We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank,” Walz said near the end of the briefing. “Somebody’s going to write that children’s story about Minnesota.”
Anne Frank died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at age 15 after spending two years in hiding. She is among the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
In a statement shared on X on Monday, Jan. 26, the museum condemned the comparison, emphasizing that Frank was persecuted and killed because she was Jewish.
“Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish,” the museum wrote. “Leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable. Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges.”
On Monday, Jan. 26, President Trump said he spoke with Walz following the fatal shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Pretti in Minneapolis by federal agents. Writing on Truth Social, Trump described the conversation as a “very good call.”
“Governor Tim Walz called me with the request to work together with respect to Minnesota. It was a very good call, and we, actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength,” Trump wrote. “I told Governor Walz that I would have Tom Homan call him, and that what we are looking for are any and all Criminals that they have in their possession. The Governor, very respectfully, understood that, and I will be speaking to him in the near future.”
As Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents increased their presence in the city, some Minnesota school districts have considered shifting to online learning, The New York Times reported.
“Over the past several days, I have received hundreds of messages about offering a temporary virtual learning option for students who do not feel comfortable coming to school right now,” St. Paul schools superintendent Stacie Stanley said in a video message, according to The Times.
Several districts in Minneapolis and St. Paul serve large immigrant communities. Roughly half of Spanish-speaking students in St. Paul and about a quarter of Somali-speaking students were absent from school on Jan. 9, The Times reported, citing district data.
The move toward remote learning also comes amid the detainment of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, who were reportedly detained in their driveway on Jan. 21 after returning home from the child’s preschool, according to The Guardian, The Washington Post and local outlet Fox 9, which cited the Columbia Heights Public School District.
