Anne Frank's Stepsister Compares Trump to Hitler

Anne Frank's stepsister is clearly not a fan of Donald Trump. If he becomes president, "it would be a complete disaster," says Eva Schloss, an Auschwitz survivor and childhood friend of Frank's. Her mother married Frank's father after the war. The reason Schloss' Trump criticism is making headlines, however, is this part: "He is acting like another Hitler by inciting racism." Writing at Newsweek in honor of Holocaust Memorial Day on Wednesday, Schloss, 86, argued that the plight of Syrian refugees is similar to that of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. After arriving in Amsterdam in the 1930s, "I felt as if I wasn't wanted and that I was different to everybody. It is even harder for today's Syrian refugees," writes Schloss. "We haven't really learned anything."

This isn't the first time someone has compared Trump to Hitler. "This is the kind of rhetoric that allowed Hitler to move forward," former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman told CNN last month, referencing Trump's call for a ban on Muslims entering the US. Writes Schloss: "I remember how upset the world was when the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 and now everybody is building walls again to keep people out. It's absurd." She commends Germany for accepting 1 million refugees but says the UK, Canada, and the US need to do more. Frank's father tried to get visas to the US in 1940 but was denied, she adds. "Fewer people would have died in the Holocaust if the world had accepted more Jewish refugees." (More Syrian refugees stories.)