KANSAS - As President of the New York Chapter of the National Association of Jewish Legislators and a member of NAJL’s board of national directors, Assemblymember Charles D. Lavine has been at the forefront of the fight against anti-Semitism. On July 3, Dane Hicks the Anderson County Republican Chairman, posted on his paper’s Facebook page a harrowing graphic transposing a drawing of Kansas Governor Laura Kelly wearing a facemask depicting the Star of David over a photo taken during the Holocaust of women carrying children forced onto a railroad cattle car that would transport them to their deaths.

The graphic equated the Governor’s order mandating Kansans to wear masks in public to the Nazi ritualized murder of the Jews in the Second World War. Hicks apparently wanted to depict the Governor as a “kapo,” a concentration camp collaborator.

“Hicks’ conduct is grotesquely offensive,” said Lavine, “Not just to Jewish Americans but to every American. Nonetheless, I have urged him to fully explain the underlying reason that he posted the anti-Semitic and anti-American image in the hope that such soul searching may be a beneficial teachable moment. I await his response.”

Assemblymember Lavine is Chair of the Assembly Elections Law Committee and was previously Chair of the Ethics Committee. He is President of the New York Chapter of the National Association of Jewish Legislators and is a Member of NAJL’s board of national directors.