Idaho state legislator Heather Scott. Photo: Screenshot.

An Idaho state legislator was under fire on Monday for remarks she made in a media interview that compared coronavirus restrictions on individual movement to Nazi Germany’s persecution of the Jews.

Heather Scott — a Republican who represents District 1 in the Idaho state legislature — told Houston-based podcast host Jess Fields that Idaho Governor Brad Little was a “little Hitler” for preventing “non-essential” workers in the state from going to work during the pandemic.

“I mean, that’s no different than Nazi Germany, where you had government telling people, ‘You are an essential worker or a nonessential worker,’ and the nonessential workers got put on a train,” Scott said, referencing the deportation of millions of Jews and other groups targeted by the Nazis to concentration camps in cattle trains.

Scott’s remarks immediately sparked an outraged reaction from local community leaders.

“Mass murder and genocide is not the same thing as deciding which businesses should essentially stay open and which should stay closed,” Rabbi Tamar Malino of Spokane’s Temple Beth Shalom told the Idaho State Journal.

Brenda Hammond, president of the Bonner County Human Rights Task Force, said in an email: “It makes my heart heavy to hear a comment from an elected official that shows such deep disregard and lack of respect for what the Jewish people experienced during the time of the Holocaust. It also shows an extreme ignorance of history.”

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) tweeted, “Idaho State Rep. Heather Scott’s comparison of stay-at-home orders during the pandemic to Nazi death camps is unfathomably offensive and an unforgivable affront to victims of the Holocaust. She should apologize immediately.”

Idaho State Rep. Heather Scott’s comparison of stay-at-home orders during the pandemic to Nazi death camps is unfathomably offensive and an unforgivable affront to victims of the Holocaust.

She should apologize immediately.https://t.co/Dl88DDp3DZ

— American Jewish Committee (@AJCGlobal) April 20, 2020

Scott defended her remarks on Monday, writing on her Facebook page that her “recent analogies are poignant and relative to our times.”