Marjorie Taylor Greene Challenged by Democrat to Visit Holocaust Museum

Jewish congressman Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat, challenged Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, on Wednesday to visit a Holocaust museum after she made unfound claims that the Ukrainian people were Nazis.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he claimed that he wanted to "denazify" the Eastern European country.

Putin's denazification claim has received widespread backlash from critics who believe Russia is infringing on Ukraine's sovereignty in a power grab. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish and had family who died in the Holocaust, has condemned the Russian president's claim.

During a House Oversight Committee hearing on China on Wednesday, Greene presented two articles about Nazis in Ukraine, one was from Time magazine in January 2021 titled "Like, Share, Recruit: How a White-Supremacist Militia Uses Facebook to Radicalize and Train New Members" and the other was from NBC News in March 2022 titled "Ukraine's Nazi problem is real, even if Putin's 'denazification' claim isn't."

"It's amazing to me that just in a few years time, it's now considered misinformation to talk about the Nazis in Ukraine," Greene said at the hearing.

Newsweek reached out to Greene's office via email and Moskowitz's office via phone for comment.

Moskowitz, whose grandparents survived the Holocaust, later replied to Greene's comments, without specifically naming the congresswoman, saying at the hearing: "There are no concentration camps in Ukraine...There's no gas chambers. There's no ovens...They're not trying to erase a people."

"Stop bringing up Nazis and Hitler," he said. "The only people who know about Nazis and Hitler are the 10 million people and their families who lost their loved ones, a generation people who were wiped out. It is enough of this disgusting behavior using Nazis as propaganda."

The congressman continued: "You want to talk about Nazis? Get yourself over to the Holocaust museum. You go see what Nazis did. It's despicable that we use that and we allow it and we sit here like somehow it's regular."

Greene has used the claim that there is a faction of Nazis in Ukraine to fight against sending additional aid to the Eastern European country. As the Russian-Ukrainian war rages on into a third year of fighting, support for continued funding has dwindled among Republican U.S. lawmakers.

It has been months since the Senate passed a $95-billion funding package that would give aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia, money to Israel in its war with Hamas, and funds for Taiwan to combat Chinese aggression.

However, the House has yet to act on the bill and instead, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, released the language of three separate funding bills that would fund Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific region on Wednesday.

On Sunday, Greene wrote on X, formerly Twitter, "It's antisemitic to make Israeli aid contingent on funding Ukrainian Nazis. These should be separate bills."

Greene's post was fact-checked by a community note, which is a small blurb below a post that gives readers added context and typically disputes the X user's claims.

The note read: "Ukraine is not 'Ukrainian Nazis.' This is a false claim from Russian propaganda. Combining security funding for different states in one bill is not 'antisemitic.'"

Update 4/17/24, 6:45 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information.