This year is the eightieth year since the Nazi introduction of the yellow star for European Jews. Being called yellow even today is a derogatory and demeaning term. However, this practice of identifying and dehumanising Jews was nothing new and went back a long way. This article does not have the space to chronicle all the occasions this practice was carried out, as there were dozens in multiple countries over the last two millennia, but I will start by outlining just a few.
In the year 887 of the CE, Aghlabid Governor of the Emirate of Sicily ordered Jews to wear on their garments and put on their doors a piece of cloth in the form of a donkey and to wear yellow belts and special hats.
The Nazis resurrected this practice as part of their persecutions during the Holocaust. Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Main Security Office, first recommended that Jews should wear identifying badges following the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9 and 10, in 1938. Shortly after the invasion of Poland in September 1939, local German authorities began introducing mandatory wearing of badges. Bit by bit the yellow star got introduced to newly conquered territories. By 1942, Germany, its satellite states and occupied territories adopted standard, brutally enforced regulations stipulating that Jews must wear identifying yellow star badges. Non wearing of the star would most likely involve the offender being shot.
One brave King makes a stand
Only in Denmark, where King Christian X is said to have threatened to wear the badge himself if it were imposed on his country’s Jewish population, were the Germans unable to impose such a regulation. The German government’s policy of forcing Jews to wear identifying badges was but one of many psychological tactics aimed at isolating and dehumanizing the Jews of Europe, directly marking them as being different (i.e. inferior) to everyone else. It allowed for the easier facilitation of their separation from society and subsequent ghettoization, which ultimately led to the deportation and murder of 6 million Jews.
Antisemitism is still alive and well, and this ancient hatred of the people of God fuelled by the Evil One, is gathering pace in these days. Especially from the “intelligentsia” despite their claim of acceptance and tolerance. May we have the courage of King Christian X of Belgium to stand against the enemy and say not on our watch will this or anything like it happen again.
