After Ohio resident June Scharf stopped at the MGM Northfield Park Casino near Cleveland to attend a comedy show, she noticed that the security uniforms featured a yellow polo shirt with a six-pointed star wit the MGM lion logo inside the start, resembling the badges Jewish people were forced to wear in Nazi Germany.
“I have family that died in the Holocaust,” Scharf told Cleveland Jewish News. “So, I feel very close to that experience. And I take it seriously and seeing that imagery takes me right back to that past which is painful. A star on a yellow shirt screams the Jude stars that they made Germans wear, German Jews. My grandfather was German and he left Germany, but other members of his family perished.”
While in Nazi Germany, Jewish people were forced to wear a similar yellow badge that featured a Star of David with the German word “Jude” in the center – which is German for “Jew.”
Starting in 1939 after the invasion of Poland, Nazis forced Jewish people to wear the Star of David badge while under their rules.
Though Scharf noticed the badge while at a casino in Ohio, the same badges are being word at other locations, including the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. After Scharf reached out to a local newspaper, MGM Resorts International announced that they will be changing the design of their security uniforms.
“We appreciate this being brought to our attention and will begin the process of changing the badges on the uniforms in question,” Debra DeShong, senior vice president of corporate communications for MGM Resorts International, wrote in an email to the paper. “We regret anyone was offended — it was certainly not our intention. We are committed to ensuring that everyone feels welcome on our properties. Diversity and inclusion is at the core of our company’s values.”
Though there is no definite timeline as to when the new badge design will be released, MGM is currently working on changing the uniforms.
