MGM Resorts International announced this week that it will redesign its security uniform following a complaint by a Jewish customer at a casino near Cleveland that the security badge-type star on it resembled the yellow Star of David that Jews were forced to wear in the Holocaust.
“My most immediate thought was, this is a problem,” June Scharf told CNN, recalling entering the venue.
“It was a combination that it was a star, and it was on a yellow backdrop,” she added.
Debra DeShong, senior vice president of corporate communications for MGM Resorts International, told The Cleveland Jewish News, which contacted the company: “We appreciate this being brought to our attention and will begin the process of changing the badges on the uniforms in question. 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.”
“I have family that died in the Holocaust,” Scharf told The 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 [Juden] stars that they made Germans wear, German Jews. My grandfather was German and he left Germany, but other members of his family perished.”
She told CNN, regarding the shirt appearance, “There’s a million things you could put on a shirt design-wise, but I understand that not everyone is aware of that symbolism and its place in history.”