News Station Showed The Worst Graphic During Yom Kippur Segment

WGN, a local Chicago television station, has apologized after airing an offensive image during a news broadcast yesterday. The anchor made a brief note that the evening marked the start of Yom Kippur, Judaism's holiest day, while showing a yellow badge used during the Holocaust to identify Jews. According to the Holocaust Memorial Center, the Star of David first appeared as a symbol of Judaism in the 1200s. The motif was co-opted by the Nazis in the 1930s, when Jewish citizens were forced to wear depictions of the star to identify themselves in occupied areas through the end of the war. As the center explains, forcing Jews to wear the badge "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." Some viewers captured screenshots of the moment and posted them on Twitter.

The station apologized swiftly, on air and in a statement posted on its website. "Last night, we ran a story to recognize Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. The artwork chosen to accompany the story came from a graphics image bank. Regrettably, we failed to recognize that the image was an offensive Nazi symbol," they write. "We are extremely embarrassed and we deeply apologize to our viewers and to the Jewish community for this mistake. Ignorance is not an excuse." Yom Kippur is the Jewish day of atonement. Observant Jews fasted from Tuesday night through Wednesday, and many spend the day in synagogue.