MOST of us are familiar with the story of Anne Frank, the Dutch teenager who hid with her family and other Jews in an Amsterdam attic during Nazi occupation, before being denounced to authorities and arrested. Anne, along with her sister and parents and the others hiding with them, were deported to the death camps. Only Anne’s father, Otto Frank, survived.

No-one is quite certain who denounced the Franks, but their fate was not dissimilar to that of countless other Jews during World War II, who were turned in not only by supporters of the Nazi regime, but also by colleagues, neighbours and even people they trusted and considered their friends. Some betrayed for money, others out of hate, fear or prejudice.

Today, much to the shock and dismay of many in the Jewish community both in the US and abroad, a radical zionist group is denouncing people guilty of no other crime than opposing a genocide and is submitting their names to the US government on what it calls its “deport list.”

Specifically, the group, Betar US, is handing over the names and contact information of overseas students who have been involved, even in a minor capacity, in opposing the genocide being carried out by Israel against the Palestinians of Gaza, and urging that they be sent home.

So far, US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has been happy to oblige, even though all those being detained were in the US legitimately, either as visa or green card holders.

University student activists Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia and Momodou Taal at Cornell were at the top of Betar’s list. Now, both are fighting deportation.

Betar is a right-wing zionist movement founded in Latvia in 1923 by Zeev Jabotinsky. On its website, the US chapter of Betar describes its members as “Jewish warriors” and proclaims they are “loud, proud, aggressive and unapologetically zionist. We aren’t the nice, polite Jews.”

Betar has endorsed fascistic symbols and uses tactics that threaten violence, including handing out pagers to pro-Palestine activists — a dark reference to the exploding pagers Israel sent to Lebanon that murdered 37 people, including two children and four healthcare workers.

Betar is so extreme that even the US Anti-Defamation League, a conservative pro-Israel organisation founded to combat anti-semitism, has classified it as a hate group.

“It’s horrifying to see what’s going on,” said Abby Stein, an Israeli-American rabbi and author and a member of Rabbis for Ceasefire, when we talked during a rally on Monday for Trans Day of Visibility.

Stein, who is transgender and was also a leader in the Women’s March protest movement, has been to numerous pro-Palestine student encampments, where, she noted, some of the organisers and many of the participants were Jews.

“It’s not by chance that no Jewish students have been included” on the Betar deportation list, she said. “If they did that, they’d lose what little support they have.” And deporting pro-Palestinian students will not make things safer for Jews, Stein argues.

“Whenever there was a country that expelled people, it never ended well for Jews,” she said.

Jonah Rubin of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) agrees. “These policies have nothing to do with Jewish safety,” Rubin told news outlet The Intercept, addressing the deportations. Instead, Rubin says, this is “about widespread censorship and an attempt to shut down any and all dissent — whether it’s about Palestine, whether it’s about human rights, or whether it’s about other movements for social justice.”

On Wednesday, a group of Jewish students at Columbia launched a solidarity action in support of those who have been arrested or expelled from the university for supporting the Palestinian cause. Backed by fellow students holding signs reading “Release Mahmoud Khalil now” and “Jews against ICE,” four Jewish students chained themselves to university gates. ICE is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency that has been seizing overseas students at their homes and even off the streets.

“We demand to know the names of the Columbia trustees who facilitated the abduction of our beloved friend by collaborating with the Trump administration,” read a post from the Columbia chapter of JVP, referring to Khalil who remains in custody in Louisiana. “We will not leave until our demand is met.”

A day earlier, at least 300 Harvard students and supporters protested at what they described as a “complete capitulation to Donald Trump” by university president Alan M Garber. Garber had agreed to collaborate with a government task force probing anti-semitism after the Trump administration threatened to withhold close to $9 billion in federal funds from the university. However, the task force is largely seen as a cover to root out anyone who publicly opposes Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

“I should be shocked by Jews reporting anyone to authorities that could lead to their deportation but, unfortunately, the conflation of criticism of Israel’s actions, let alone the ideology of zionism, with anti-semitism is where this has inevitably led,” said Leah Levane, co-chair of Jewish Voice for Labour.

“Most people are rightly clear about condemning those who reported Jews in hiding to the Nazis. Under that regime, open opposition to deportations would have been highly risky but we still expected people to not actively collaborate. To do so now, especially as Jews with such a terrible history, is heinous as well as reprehensible,” she said.

Invoking the Holocaust as justification for the draconian clampdown on pro-Palestine protesters is especially hurtful to those actually who lived through it. British Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos, 87 and a fixture on the monthly national Palestine rallies in London, says using the Holocaust to justify Israel’s continued massacre of Palestinians in Gaza is “a complete insult to the memory of the Holocaust.”

Speaking a year ago at his very first national rally on Palestine, Kapos told a crowd in Hyde Park: “We Jews who survived all this pain, killings, humiliation and destruction are against the use of the memory of the Holocaust by the government of Israel as cover and justification for the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank.”

But even for Kapos, there have been consequences. In a time of polarisation and rising extremism, we are confronted with the confounding sight not only of Jews turning in opponents of genocide for deportation, but of Jews, including Kapos, being called in for questioning by police for their empathy with a people similarly oppressed.

“I think it’s a very dangerous slide towards complete authoritarianism and even in the direction of fascism,” said Kapos outside the Charing Cross police station where he was questioned last month for his role in the January 18 national Palestine demonstration in London. If anyone can recognise the signs, it’s Kapos.

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland.