Louisiana Republican Congressman Clay Higgins is under fire after recording a video inside the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland.
Over one million people were slaughtered at the camp during World War II; the site is now the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. Higgins’s video has been condemned by the museum, which tweeted, “Everyone has the right to personal reflections. However, inside a former gas chamber, there should be mournful silence. It’s not a stage.”
Higgins narrates a tour of the camp in the video while surrounded by canisters of Zyklon B, telling viewers that it only took about 20 minutes for everyone to die.
“This is why homeland security must be squared away, why our military must be invincible,” Higgins said. “The world’s a smaller place now than it was in World War II. The United States is more accessible to terror like this, horror like this.”
Higgins is a former law enforcement officer who serves on the House Homeland Security Committee. At times, he points the camera to himself and talks selfie-style while inside the gas chambers.
“It’s hard to walk away from the gas chambers and ovens without a very sober feeling of commitment — unwavering commitment — to make damn sure that the United States of America is protected from the evils of the world,” Higgins said in the video.
The video was first posted to the YouTube channel of Lee Johnson Media, which bills itself as “A Conservative podcast looking at America of today.”
Check out the video above. Higgins has yet to release a statement.