Trump fan to protesters: ‘Go to Auschwitz’
A video posted over the weekend shows an unidentified man telling protesters outside a Cleveland rally Saturday for GOP frontrunner Donald Trump to “Go to Auschwitz” and appearing to throw a Nazi salute. Carrying a Trump sign, the man curses protesters before walking away.
Behind him, other attendees exiting the rally chant “Don’t be a chump, vote for Trump.”
A video of the incident posted to YouTube by user Kyle Bogden had more than 205,000 views as of Monday afternoon.
Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II. At least 1.1 million prisoners died at Auschwitz, including Jews, Poles, Romani, Soviet POWs, Jehovah’s Witnesses and others. One in six Jews killed during the Holocaust died at Auschwitz.
The incident followed one Friday night in which Birgitt Peterson, 69, of Yorkville, Ill., raised her right arm in a Nazi salute in a confrontation with protesters following the cancellation of a Trump rally in Chicago. Peterson later told The New York Times that she took offense at comparisons between Trump and Hitler made by protesters, and said she was not a Nazi supporter.
Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., retweeted a tweet that incorrectly identified Peterson as a supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. He later deleted the tweet.
The New York Times contributed to this report.
This story was originally published March 14, 2016 at 4:47 PM with the headline "Trump fan to protesters: ‘Go to Auschwitz’."