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Natalie Portman Stirs Controversy as She Compares Anne Frank with Illegals Hiding from ICE in the US

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Recalling a trip she took when she was 16 years old to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, Hollywood actress, Natalie Portman, became the latest celebrity to jump into the US immigration controversy fray by taking to social media to express her views.

Edited by: JV Staff

Addressing whether it is appropriate to craft an analogy between immigrant detention camps on the US southern border with the concentration camps of Hitler’s Europe during World War II, the actress who was born in Israel posted the photo of herself at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam on Instagram on Wednesday and wrote: 

“When I was 16 I visited Anne Frank’s house with Miep Gies, the woman who bravely hid Anne and her family when the Nazis were rounding up Jews in Amsterdam and much of Europe. Today, I shudder at the thought of a young girl hiding somewhere in my own country, afraid to turn on her light or make a noise or play outside lest she get rounded up by our government. #notinmyname and #notinmycountry Follow @theirc @fams2gether @together.rising @aclu_nationwide @raicestexas to learn how you can help.”

According to a report in the Jerusalem Post, Portman’s post comes on the heels of a tweet by New York City Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez  that said, “This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying.”

At least five American Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, and many public figures let Ocasio-Cortez known they thought she was wrong to compare migrant detention centers on the southern border to concentration camps.

The JPost also reported that Deborah Lipstadt, the Emory University professor and scholar whose fight against a prominent Holocaust survivor was the basis for the movie, Denial, tweeted following Ocasio-Cortez’s statement: “Talk about the horrific conditions & not historical analogies. Don’t give those who are behind this policy a chance to piously claim they are being wrongly accused. Use of Holocaust analogies to condemn US immigration policy is a distraction.”

Portman, now 38, starred on Broadway in a revival of “The Diary of Anne Frank” that same year as a 16-year-old, according to a report in the Forward. She posted about studying the role of Frank, comparing the experience of Frank and her family hiding in the Secret Annex to that of migrants hiding from Immigration And Custom Enforcement agents.

The Forward suggested that suggested that Portman may have been indirectly referencing the story of Liza, a teenager in Passaic, New Jersey, who told The New York Times that she and her family huddled in their house with the lights off early last Sunday morning as ICE agents waited outside.

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