Candace Owens has been criticised for her “despicable” denial of Holocaust atrocities, including the human experiments Nazi doctor Josef Mengele carried out on prisoners at Auschwitz.
The controversial conservative commentator, 35, has been criticised for her “increasing embrace of anti-Semitic tropes” after claiming on her show last week that Mengele’s horrific twin experiments were “bizarre propaganda”.
Mengele – nicknamed the Angel of Death because he selected those to be killed in the gas chambers – carried out a series of cruel tests on twins throughout the war, including sewing them together to create conjoined twins.
Of the 1,500 twins subjected to his horrific and often fatal experiments, only about 200 survived.
The commentator is now facing criticism for her “historically inaccurate” comments, with the Anti-Defamation League, founded to combat anti-Semitism, bigotry and discrimination, warning that her vile remarks are “dangerous.”
Candace Owens has been criticized for her “increasing embrace of anti-Semitic tropes” after claiming on her Candace show last week that Nazi doctor Josef Mengele’s horrific twin experiments were “bizarre propaganda.” She is pictured during the show
Mengele, nicknamed the Angel of Death because he selected those to be killed in the gas chambers, carried out a series of cruel tests on twins during the war, including stitching them together to create conjoined twins. Pictured, from left: SS officers Richard Baer, Dr Josef Mengele and Rudolf Hoess
“It’s hard to get lower than Candace Owens’ claims that Mengele’s twin experiments at the Auschwitz death camp during the Holocaust are propaganda,” a spokesperson for the New York-based organisation told DailyMail.com.
‘Mengele’s experiments were widely documented, including by himself, and photographed. In addition, some of his victims survived and testified about these atrocities.
Owens’s Holocaust denial shows his growing acceptance of antisemitic tropes.
‘Questioning the evil nature of Hitler and his regime and claiming that the United States and the Allies were the ones who committed ethnic cleansing against Germany is not only historically inaccurate, but also despicable and dangerous.’
Irina Tsukerman, a human rights and national security lawyer and geopolitical analyst, also warned that Owens is “normalizing and mainstreaming anti-Semitism and the pro-Nazi agenda.”
“Owens’ comments are dangerous because they fuel Holocaust denial, downplay Nazi crimes against humanity, dehumanise and defame Jews and support the spread of hate-filled conspiracy theories,” he told DailyMail.com. “However, they are also likely to be the product of state propaganda.”
Tsukerman argued that the “structure” of Owens’ rhetoric “closely resembles the substance of the questions and conspiracy theories produced by mainstream Russian propaganda outlets.”
Acknowledging that while Owens has “lost a lot of support” due to his hateful comments, the lawyer warned that through his “large following,” he is still “radicalizing his base, normalizing and mainstreaming anti-Semitism and the pro-Nazi agenda.”
Peter Somogyi (left) and his twin brother Thomas (right) were handed over to Josef Mengel at Auschwitz in July 1944.
Mengele was perhaps the best-known Nazi doctor for his experiments on twins at Auschwitz. Pictured here are twins Thomas (left) and Peter Somogyi (right), who were handed over to Mengele during the Holocaust.
Owens, in episode 17 of her show Candace, apparently attempted to refute historical accounts of how the Nazis experimented on Jews during the Holocaust.
“It is engraved in our minds: the Nazis experimented on innocent people,” he said.
‘I mean some of the stories, by the way, sound completely absurd, like the idea that they just cut a human into pieces and then sewed it back together.
“Why would you do that? Literally, even if you were the most evil person in the world, that’s a huge waste of time and materials. Cutting a person in half and sewing them together? That sounds like outlandish propaganda.”
However, the Nazis extensively documented the human experiments they carried out during World War II.
Between 1933 and 1945, Adolf Hitler and other powerful Nazi leaders, such as Heinrich Himmler, led a campaign to “cleanse” German society of those considered biological threats to the ideal Aryan race.
Racial policies developed by Nazi Germany determined that Jews, Gypsies and Slavs (including Poles, Czechs, Russians and Serbs) were “racially inferior subhumans” and therefore should be eliminated from society.
A Polish witness is shown with a doctor explaining the nature of her injuries in 1946, as Nazi doctors were tired of performing experiments on humans.
Nazi officials recruited medically trained physicians and geneticists, psychiatrists and anthropologists to develop their policies on race and to try to create what would in effect have been Nazi super soldiers.
Mengele was perhaps the best-known Nazi doctor due to his experiments on twins at Auschwitz.
Between 1943 and 1944, his experiments were of particular interest to the Nazi leadership, as one twin could serve as a test subject and the other as a control, and it was also hoped that his research might discover how the Nazis could reproduce more twins.
Mengele’s cruel tests included amputating healthy limbs, deliberately infecting twins with diseases such as typhus, transfusing blood from one twin to the other, and sewing twins together to create conjoined twins.
Eva-Mozes Kor, a survivor, claimed Mengele performed blood transfusions on opposite-sex twins to change their sexes, experimented on the genitals of twins and attempted to attach the urinary tract of a seven-year-old girl to his own colon.
Most twins died during Mengele’s procedures, but if any survived, they were killed and dissected for comparative autopsies.
Candace Owens’ denial of Holocaust atrocities is the latest scandal to hit the controversial commentator, pictured at a Turning Point event in June 2024.
Social media users have also criticised Owens for the denial, calling her “degenerate” and “one of the dumbest and vile human beings on the planet”.
“This is his lowest performance yet,” wrote one X user.
“Candy-O is a narcissist. She knows it’s a lie but she wants those clicks so bad,” another tweeted. “She desperately wants to be relevant.”
“Vile is a kind word to describe what she has chosen to be… but vile is a good start,” another added.
Some critics even questioned her mental state, with one tweeting: “Wow, she’s gone crazy.”
One said they were “scared something had happened to Candace” because her comments had “become increasingly weird” over the years.
Another added that she “seriously needs help.”
Social media users have also criticised Owens for the denial, calling her “degenerate” and “one of the dumbest and vile human beings on the planet”.
Owens’ denial of Holocaust atrocities is the latest scandal to plague the controversial commentator.
In March, he parted ways with The Daily Wire, which hosted his show, after weeks of tension with the right-wing outlet’s co-founder Ben Shapiro over the war between Israel and Hamas and his promotion of various conspiracy theories.
He has also engaged in heated online debates with several members of the Jewish community.
She was also suspended from YouTube last year for alleged hate speech against the LGBTQ community.
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