The Seattle Times | June 30, 2021 | By Jim Brunner
A Washington state lawmaker critical of COVID-19 vaccine mandates wore a yellow Star of David at a speech over the weekend — a symbol the Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Holocaust.
State Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen, had the star affixed to his pink shirt during a speech to conservative activists at a Lacey church basketball gym on Saturday.
“It’s an echo from history,” Walsh wrote on a Facebook page where a video of the event was posted. “In the current context, we’re all Jews.”
The misappropriation of the infamous star symbol — used to identify Jews first for exclusion, and then for extermination — was criticized as deeply offensive by a local Holocaust education leader.
“Our government is making an effort to protect their own citizens, not kill them,” said Dee Simon, Baral Family executive director of the Seattle-based Holocaust Center for Humanity, which works to teach people about Nazi Germany’s murder of 6 million Jews during World War II. “It not only trivializes it, it distorts history.”
In an interview Tuesday, Walsh said he had been given the star by someone at the event, where most attendees were wearing one. He described some of the organizers as “deeply concerned about vaccine passports and vaccine segregation.”