Yellow badge: what Wikipedia removed
The yellow badge was an accessory Jews were required to wear in various societies, most recently under Nazi rule. In 2010 the opening said: “It is intended to be a badge of shame associated with antisemitism. In both Christian and Islamic countries…” Today the opening says the badge would “mark them as an outsider,” without the word antisemitism; the word survives 11 times elsewhere in the article, not the opening. A reader today does not learn from the opening that the badge is explicitly named as a tool of antisemitism used in both Christian and Islamic societies.
The word “antisemitism” appeared 1 times in this article’s opening at its peak, in 2010. Today the opening carries none; the body carries 11. Checked against the full current article on 2026-08-01.
The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot
Section titled “The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot”| word | 2005 | 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | 6 October 2023 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| antisemitism | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| occupation | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
Counts are of the opening paragraph only, the part most readers, search engines and AI training sets ever quote.
What was taken out
Section titled “What was taken out”- An image caption naming the Nazi mandate in France, dropped or reworded.
- The explicit statement that the badge was a tool of antisemitism used in both Christian and Islamic countries, dropped from the opening.
How it opened then, and now
Section titled “How it opened then, and now”2005 (revision 16273981):
The yellow badge which Jewish people were forced to wear during the Nazi occupation of Europe: a black Star of David on a yellow field, with the word “Jew” written inside. A yellow badge is a mandatory mark or a piece of cloth of specific geometric shape, worn on the outer garment in order to distinguish a person of certain religion or ethnicity in public. It is traditionally associated with the persecution of Jewish people . In some countries a badge was accompanied or replaced by identifying garb or hat. In the Middle Ages clothes worn by different groups of people were regulated by law. The color yellow had been maligned since feudal times. Horses that were yellowish were considered worth…
2025 (revision 1291668648):
Badge forced to be worn by Jews at various times in history Yellow star labeled Juif , the French term for Jew , that was worn during the Nazi occupation of France . The yellow badge , also known as the yellow patch , the Jewish badge , or the yellow star ( German : Judenstern , lit. ’ Jew’s star ’ ), was an accessory that Jews were required to wear in certain non-Jewish societies throughout history. A Jew’s ethno-religious identity, which would be denoted by the badge, would help to mark them as an outsider . Legislation that mandated Jewish subjects to wear such items has been documented in some Middle Eastern caliphates and in some European kingdoms during the medieval period and the earl…
Related
Section titled “Related”- The drift report: what changed across all 61,944 watched articles
- The case file for this article, with every snapshot and every marked removal
- Who made the cuts: removals grouped by the account that made them
- The live article on Wikipedia
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