A detail from an antisemitic flyer opposing Covid-19 vaccination policy distributed in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Photo: Screenshot.

Antisemitic flyers comparing New York City’s impending vaccine pass requirement for entry to public places with the genocidal policies of the Nazi regime towards Jews during World War II were distributed in New York City on Wednesday evening.

Bearing the image of a yellow “Judenstern” (“Jews’ Star”) from the Nazi era with the words “Not Vaccinated” substituted for “Jew,” the flyers were discovered at several locations on Second and Third Avenues on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Local news site Upper East Site reported that the offending flyers were posted on a vacant storefront on East 79th street and Third Avenue and upon an MTA Subway building at the corner of East 83rd street and Second Avenue in Yorkville.

One local resident told the website that she had been shaken by the flyers.

“I just saw the yellow star and I’m a Jew and was very upset … it was just sort of stunning to see,” said the woman, who gave her name as Emily.

“It’s antisemitic,” she emphasized.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has continued, antisemitic propaganda and images have been used by members of the burgeoning movements in several western nations opposing mass vaccination.

The profusion of the “Judenstern” at demonstrations against social distancing and vaccination drives in Germany caused the city of Munich to ban its display in early June.

In Germany as well as in France and other countries, the abuse of Holocaust memory by anti-vaccination advocates has often been accompanied by viscerally antisemitic propaganda, accusing “Jews” of spreading the virus in order to profit financially from it, echoing the medieval calumny that Jews deliberately poisoned wells to spread bubonic plague and other deadly diseases.

Meanwhile, in the US, several Republican lawmakers have also displayed the “Judenstern” as a protest against vaccination policy, including Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in the US Congress and State Rep. Jim Walsh, who represents the city of Aberdeen in the Washington State Legislature.