TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas Republican leaders rejected comparisons of COVID-19 vaccine requirements to the Holocaust Friday after a former Kansas City, Kansas, mayoral candidate donned a yellow star to testify on the Legislature’s plans to resist federal rules.
Two statements, posted to social media by Senate President Ty Masterson and Speaker of the House Ron Ryckman, come two weeks after Rep. Brenda Landwehr, a Republican, invoked the Holocaust twice while discussing COVID-19 requirements and agreeing with similar statements made by a Wichita union leader.
The comments last month were immediately decried as anti-semitic by the American Jewish Committee of Greater Kansas City. The Kansas Democratic Party later held a news conference calling for Republican leaders and Attorney General Derek Schmidt to condemn the statements.
Until Friday, however, Republican leaders had been relatively quiet on the issue.
When asked about Landwehr’s comments last month, Masterson, a Republican, said they simply reflected how “extremely serious” Landwehr and others take the issue.
On Friday, the Holocaust comparisons continued when Daran Duffy, who finished last in a five-candidate mayoral primary field in August, told lawmakers he’d worn a yellow star as a reminder that “every single thing that Hitler did he did in accordance with the laws of his country.”
Duffy defended his stance, stating that the U.S. was headed toward a catastrophe like the Holocaust when challenged by Sen. Pat Pettey, a Democrat
“You are not respecting Jewish people when you wear a star like that. You are desecrating that memory. Millions of people were killed, we are not talking about millions of people being killed here,” Pettey said.
Later in the hearing, two more speakers defended Duffy’s comparisons.
Following the exchanges, Ryckman and Masterson each released a statement on Twitter.
“Senate Republicans reject, in the strongest possible terms, any analogies to the Holocaust. Such comparisons are inappropriate and bear no resemblance to the issues we are debating today,” Masterson wrote.
Ryckman called the analogies “disappointing.”
“Let me be clear: the issues being debated today are important to KS, but they are in no way comparable to what millions of Jews endured who were ripped from their families, & marked for death by the Nazis,” Ryckman wrote.
Gov. Laura Kelly posted a similar condemnation on Twitter Friday.
Comparisons to the Holocaust have been common throughout the COVID-19 pandemic as a form of opposition to public health measure.
Around six million Jews perished in the Holocaust — more than the estimated 5.8 million Jewish adults that currently live in the United States. That does not include hundreds of thousands of political prisoners, LGBTQ people, Roma and millions of Soviet and Polish civilians.
Last week, experts pointed to polarized political environment, antisemitism and lack of education about the Holocaust as reasons for such comparisons.
“They really don’t understand what took place and the persecution that took place,” Gary Nachman, the plains states regional director for the Anti Defamation League, told The Kansas City Star. “To use the analogy of a genocide that you have no control over to a mandate that helps the betterment of all people is just a bizarre stretch.”
(The Star’s Dan Desrochers contributed to this report.)
