After Missouri woman compares mask mandate to Holocaust, Auschwitz museum responds
After a woman at a Springfield City Council meeting recently compared a mask mandate to both slavery and Nazis forcing Jews to wear yellow stars during the Holocaust, the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum denounced her comments on Twitter.
The woman had appeared among a queue of 61 people making public comments during a July 13 city council meeting held via video. In her comments, she said a mask mandate would infringe on her freedom to choose what happens to her body.
“In Nazi Germany, the Jews were forced to wear a yellow star,” she said, referencing the Star of David that Jewish people were ordered to wear in Nazi-occupied Europe. “Well this mask is our yellow star.
“Citizens of Springfield are being coerced into wearing something as they shop and function in society, and we will be fined if we do not comply, just like the Jews. Now that’s pretty scary, isn’t it,” she continued.
Around the country, some members of the public and some elected Republican officials have been criticized for making comparisons with the Holocaust while opposing mask requirements meant to help stop the spread of the new coronavirus.
Video of the woman’s comments in Springfield was posted on Twitter Thursday by someone who described the clip as an “ignorant woman in Springfield, MO compares face masks to the Holocaust at a city council meeting.”
The Twitter account for the Auschwitz Memorial retweeted the post a day later.
The post said visitors to the Auschwitz museum are asked to wear face masks. The memorial is based in southern Poland, at the site of the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp where more than 1.1 million people were killed during the Holocaust.
“Wearing a mask is a sign of our responsibility for the safety of us all,” the museum tweeted. “It protects health & lives. A mask is not a yellow star. Such a comparison is disrespectful to Jews humiliated by it during the Holocaust.”
The woman at the Springfield city council meeting did not introduce herself by name. She said that, while she isn’t a medical or legal expert, she works with the public daily.
After reading a passage from the Bible, she also compared the mask mandate to slavery.
“To force a mask is to force a muzzle,” she said. “It is a form of enslavement. Well I’m not a slave, and you’re not my masters.”
Springfield’s mask ordinance went into place at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. Everyone over the age of 11 is now required to wear masks in public spaces. Those who don’t comply with the mandate could receive a $100 fine.
About 45 miles south of Springfield, in Branson, at least three people made similar statements comparing mask mandates to the Holocaust at Thursday’s board of aldermen meeting.
The vote on whether or not to require masks in the popular tourist destination was postponed following the more than 8-hour-long meeting.
Across the state line in Kansas, a county Republican Party chairman who owns a weekly newspaper recently posted a cartoon on the paper’s Facebook page that equated the Democratic governor’s public mask order with the genocide of the European Jews.
Dane Hicks, owner and publisher of The Anderson County Review, later apologized.
Star reporter Kevin Hardy and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
