Obama and Congressmen
Obama and CongressmenReuters

A Republican congressman incurred the outrage of Jewish Democrats on Friday after invoking the Holocaust during a House debate on a President Barack Obama-backed trade bill. 

Criticizing labor unions, Rep. David Schweikert of Arizona asserted their advocacy efforts to counter the free-trade push were "crazy," before likening the unions to an infamous Nazi. 

"Goebbels would be very proud of them," said Schweikert, in a bizarre reference to Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich's notorious propaganda minister. 

The National Jewish Democratic Council swiftly attacked Schweikert for the "inappropriate rhetoric" and demanded an immediate apology. 

“The name ‘Joseph Goebbels’ has no place in the important policy debates facing our nation," the NJDC said in a statement. 

"To invoke the man responsible for some of Hitler’s most heinous anti-Semitic propaganda in discussing the millions of hardworking American union workers is simply outrageous." 

"Rep. Schweikert owes the labor community and the American Jewish population an apology, and we strongly suggest he reconsiders his choice of words in the future."

Politicians making out of the blue allusions to Nazis and the Holocaust seems to be a worldwide phenomenon. 

In May, a spokesperson for Sweden's Green Party was forced to apologize for a Holocaust analogy in which she called the migrant crisis in Europe the "new Auschwitz."