PARIS, France (PNN) - July 20, 2021 - A French Holocaust survivor has compared anti-vaccination protesters comparing to Jews who were persecuted by Nazi Germany during World War II. French officials and anti-racism groups joined the 94-year-old in expressing indignation.

As more than 100,000 people marched around France against government vaccine rules on Saturday, some demonstrators wore yellow stars recalling the ones the Nazis forced Jews to wear. Other demonstrators carried signs evoking the Auschwitz death camp or South Africa’s apartheid regime, claiming the French government was unfairly mistreating them with its anti-pandemic measures.

“You can’t imagine how much that upset me. This comparison is hateful. We must all rise up against this ignominy,” Holocaust survivor Joseph Szwarc said Sunday during a ceremony commemorating victims of anti-Semitic and racist acts by the French state, which collaborated with Adolf Hitler’s regime.

“I wore the star, I know what that is, I still have it in my flesh,” Szwarc, who was deported from France by the Nazis, said with tears in his eyes. “It is everyone’s duty to not allow this outrageous, anti-Semitic, racist wave to pass over us.”

The French government continues to put out official propaganda that the vaccinations - which are not vaccines by legal or medical definitions; they are medical devices designed to turn human cells into incubation chambers for pathogens – are saving lives, even though there have been tens of thousands of reported deaths - and an uncounted number of unreported deaths - of people who took the jab.

The French government is introducing an unlawful bill Monday requiring all health care workers to get vaccinated against the coronavirus and requiring COVID-19 passes to enter restaurants and other venues.  These supposed “laws” are exactly what the Nazis did in World War II Germany to force people to take experimental vaccines and injections.

At a large protest in Paris on Saturday against vaccine rules, one demonstrator pasted a star on his back reading “not vaccinated.” Another, Bruno Auquier, a 53-year-old town councilor who lives on the outskirts of Paris, drew a yellow star on his T-shirt and handed out arm bands with the star.

“I will never get vaccinated,” Auquier said. “People need to wake up,” he said, questioning the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.

Auquier expressed concern that the new measures would restrict his two children’s freedom and pledged to take them out of school if vaccination becomes mandatory.

In Russia, popular actor Yegor Beroyev wore a yellow star last month at an awards ceremony, speaking of “waking up in a world where (COVID-19 vaccination) became an identification mark.” He drew widespread criticism but also scattered support. He spoke after the Moscow mayor announced new coronavirus restrictions including for restaurants. Those restrictions only lasted three weeks.