Using the Star of David as a political sign of rebellion is hurtful and insulting
Anchorage citizens who oppose government mandates for masks recently gathered for a town meeting wearing facsimiles of the yellow Star of David Nazi arm band and fake badges — emblems that Jews in Germany and other countries were once required to wear.
Those citizens wore the Star of David patches with the inscription “Do not comply.” They misappropriated a historical symbol that Nazi Germany used to identify and control the Jewish populations before their incarceration and eventual extermination. They exploited that heinous symbol and turned it into a political sign of rebellion against their town government for requiring COVID-19 masks. They compared themselves, historically speaking, to Jews.
When this profane event occurred, the mayor of Anchorage initially defended their actions, according to news reports. “I think us borrowing that from them (the Jews) is actually a credit to them,” Dave Bronson said, referring to the Jewish people.
After the firestorm of condemnations began, the mayor eventually apologized. In a prepared statement he wrote, “I understand that we should not trivialize or compare what happened during the Holocaust to a mask mandate and I want to apologize for any perception that my statements support or compare what happened to the Jewish people in Nazi Germany, that was one of the most evil and darkest times in our world’s history.” Clearly, he got the message that his words were hurtful and an insult to the Jewish people and to history itself.
But he wasn’t the only one to praise Americans for wearing the Nazi-imposed Star of David — or to absurdly liken mask mandates to the Nazis taking away citizens’ freedoms. Other news reports have identified national elected officials who have compared private American companies requiring masks to Nazis, or cheered other groups for wearing the Star of David armbands and badges on their clothing to oppose public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This abhorrent application of history demonstrates why Holocaust education in America is still desperately needed — and how dangerous it is to strip a piece of history out of its authentic context and distort it for political purpose.
Equating Jews being forced to wear a Star of David decades ago and Americans wearing them 75 years later to oppose mask mandates because of the COVID-19 pandemic is a shameful and vile treatment of history and, in particular, of the Jewish people.
The issue of whether to require masks or vaccines is not the point. We are in dangerous territory when elected leaders think they have license to extract an event from history and use it for a completely irrelevant and trivialized purpose, cheapening the memory of the original event and history itself. History matters. Protecting history is essential to maintaining truth.
Nazi German leaders in Poland began mandating the wearing of Jewish badges and stars of David as far back as 1938. The Nazi “Police Regulation on the Labelling of Jews” was decreed on Sept. 1, 1941. Section 1 stated that Jewish people 6 or older were “forbidden to show themselves in public without a Jewish star.” As the Nazis overran Europe, Jews were required to wear the star.
According to the British Holocaust Center, “The badges were often sewn onto a person’s clothing either on the arm, chest, back, or all of those places. The intention was to isolate, harass, and humiliate Jewish people, and further embedded Nazi ideology that Jewish people were different from everyone else by marking them out from the rest of the population.”
In addition, all Jewish concentration inmates were required to wear a Jewish star on their uniforms. The stars were in different colors to denote political prisoners as well as gay and lesbian Jewish inmates.
Jewish people have long used the Star of David to show pride in their Biblical roots, and King David used it as the symbol of the ancient kingdom of Israel. As the modern Zionist movement began, the Star of David became the No. 1 symbol of Zionism and eventually for the State of Israel. The Nazis used it, on the other hand, to dehumanize and demean the Jewish people throughout Europe.
It is all too easy to misrepresent and politicize events and symbols. Often, as in the case in Anchorage, Alaska, misguided efforts, even without nefarious intention, still can hurt and even traumatize the people who live with that history.
That is why the blowback was so intense against the mayor and the leadership in Anchorage who wore the Jewish Star of David on their clothing. The danger is that leaders mischaracterize and manipulate symbols just to stir up the emotions of the crowd, history itself be damned.
Remaining silent is the wrong way to respond when groups or individuals engage in this kind of sham politics. In Exodus 20:16 it is written, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” We must bear witness to the truth of history and stop those who betray it, no matter what their cause or gain may be.