Local US news station uses Holocaust badge for Yom Kippur story

A local Chicago news station used a graphic of a yellow badge, like those the Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Holocaust, to illustrate its report on the start of Yom Kippur.

Shaped like the Star of David and featuring the word “Jude,” German for “Jew,” the badge appeared on WGN-TV Tuesday night, ahead of the Jewish holiday. Behind the badge in the graphic were concentration-camp-uniform stripes; below it were the words “Yom Kippur.”

On Wednesday, the station apologized for the error with the anchor of the Yom Kippur report saying on air: “Major correction tonight. We couldn’t see this from the set here, but in our story about Yom Kippur we apparently used a symbol that is extremely offensive to the Jewish community. We mistakenly showed a symbol used by Nazi Germany to identify Jews. We deeply apologize for that error.”

WGN-TV also issued an apology on Twitter and a more lengthy one its website.

“The artwork chosen to accompany the story came from a graphics image bank. Regrettably, we failed to recognize that the image was an offensive symbol,” the statement read.

“We are extremely embarrassed and we deeply apologize to our viewers and to the Jewish community for this mistake,” the statement said. “Ignorance is not an excuse.”

The station said it was reviewing its in-house policies and implementing changes “to make sure a hurtful oversight like this never happens again.”

The Nazis began legally compelling Polish Jews to wear identifying badges following the German invasion of their country in 1939. By 1942, Germany and the states under its control were requiring Jews to wear the badges. The sole exception was Denmark, where King Christian X is said to have threatened to wear the badge himself if it were imposed on his country’s Jews.

Scholars of the Holocaust say the badges were a means of isolating and dehumanizing European Jewry — a step toward the Final Solution.