Controversy erupted over the weekend after a Kansas newspaper posted a cartoon comparing an order to wear masks due to the coronavirus pandemic to the deportation of Jews to the Nazi gas chambers during the Holocaust.

The weekly Anderson County Review, whose publisher Dane Hicks is a Republican county chairman, posted the cartoon on Friday on its Facebook page.

It shows Democratic Kansas Governor Laura Kelly, who issued the order to wear masks last week, wearing a mask emblazoned with a Star of David. Behind her is an image of Jews being loaded on to trains bound for a concentration camp.

The caption to the cartoon reads, “Lockdown Laura says: Put on your mask…and step onto the cattle car.”

Rabbi Moti Rieber, executive director of Kansas Interfaith Action, said the Holocaust comparison is “odious” and the image was antisemitic.

“This thing is like the trifecta of garbage,” he said, and added that Republican leaders should condemn it and Hicks.

For her part, Governor Kelly said, “Mr. Hicks’s decision to publish antisemitic imagery is deeply offensive and he should remove it immediately.”

“While it’s disappointing to see, on July Fourth of all days, I know that Mr. Hicks’s views are not shared by the people of Anderson County nor Kansas as a whole,” she added.

The publisher removed the image appox. 5pm on Sunday evening, issuing an apology after social media outrage ensued.