Throughout the concentration and death camp system of Nazi Germany, a particularly revolting status was given to prisoners — who often volunteered for the role — in which they worked as underlings of the Schutzstaffel (SS), the entity responsible for the implementation of the Holocaust. Sometimes, this involved various administrative roles, but often, it involved what the United States Holocaust Museum describes as "supervisory positions within the camps." These roles included what became known as kapos, who were "selected to oversee other prisoners on labor details," and were even granted the authority to brutalize (and even kill) their fellow prisoners — authority many of these individuals happily embraced.

While not all kapos were Jewish, many were, and in the aftermath of the Second World War, the term kapo became a slur within the Jewish community that, as Daniel Sugarman put it for The Jewish Chronicle, "belongs to a special category of awfulness."

"The term is viewed with disgust by many Jews, most of whom would never choose to use it," Sugarman adds.

Personally, I have avoided using such an inflammatory slur (no matter how tempting at times) out of fear of its hyperbolic use playing into the wider dilution of the evil of the Nazis and their attempt to eradicate the Jewish people (myself and my family included). This position even applies in response to the common accusation leveled against Jewish (and Jew-ish) figures who in some way support the most virulently anti-Jewish movements within the so-called Palestinian cause.

But what about Jews who schmooze with actual Nazis?

Consider Graham Platner, who is possibly the most disgusting candidate to be presented by the Democratic Party in modern American history (and that's really saying something). Perhaps the U.S. Marine's biggest claim to fame — beyond smearing "American Sniper" Chris Kyle as the murderer of civilians "to get high numbers," describing the U.S. Army as "full of fat, lazy trash who would rather not be in uniform," and yucking it up on social media with communists and white supremacists — is that until recently, he sported a totenkopf death's head tattoo on his chest.

Yes, the same totemkopf worn by the Nazi SS units who oversaw the Holocaust.

Setting aside Platner's many darkly laughable excuses — including that the self-defined military history buff mistakenly got the tattoo without having any idea what it meant, and continued to walk around as a walking, talking, breathing adult for years without pausing once to Google the story behind that demonic skull-and-crossbones emblazoned on his flesh — we cannot miss the people who are throwing themselves on the floor at this fraud's feet.

And one of them is Bernie Sanders.

Now, Bernie Sanders is Jewish. Sure, he is a secular Jew, like millions of Jews in America, but he is a Jew nonetheless, especially in the context of the racial obsession of the Nazis during the Holocaust in which Jews were classed as a race, regardless of their piety. Moreover, Bernie Sanders has repeatedly announced that he is proud to be Jewish.

But if that is true, how could such a proud Jew embrace someone like Graham Platner, who not only had a Nazi tattoo for years (right up until he decided to run for office and he couldn't hide it anymore) but had the worst Nazi tattoo there is?

Honestly, if you're going to get a Nazi tattoo, the infamous swastika is less offensive than the specific logo of the people who murdered 6 million Jews and millions of other enemies of Nazism!

And yet this doesn't seem like a problem for Bernie Sanders at all. The anti-fascist Jew is now drooling over the man who decided to get a tattoo of the organization that would have gleefully turned Bernie Sanders into ash.

At this point, thank goodness Platner doesn't go the whole hog and dress up in the infamous pitch-black uniforms of the SS! One can only imagine the pleasure with which Bernie Sanders — a 21st-century kapo — would goosestep to Platner's tune.

To find out more about Ian Haworth and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Vidar Nordli-Mathisen at Unsplash