Nazi orders for Jews to wear a star were hateful, but far from unique – a historian traces the long history of antisemitic badges

By Flora Cassen, Chair and Associate Professor of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies, Washington University in St Louis

Growing up in Belgium, I’d hear the story of how my grandparents married during the Nazi occupation. It was not a time for celebrations, particularly for Jewish families like theirs. Naively, though, they thought marriage would protect them from being separated should they be deported. So in June 1942, they went to city hall with their loved ones – “decorated,” as my grandmother would say, with yellow stars.

Hearing that story as a child, I imagined them in dark…

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