K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: DC Public Schools investigates after elementary students say they were forced to reenact the Holocaust.
Officials with D.C. Public Schools are investigating after third graders reported they had to reenact the Holocaust during a library lesson Friday.
In a letter sent to parents at Watkins Elementary School in Southeast, the principal says according reports he received, the re-enactment included “students being asked to portray participants from the Holocaust like Adolf Hitler, digging ditches to serve as mass graves, and simulated shootings. It was also alleged that the staff member leading the lesson also made anti-Semitic statements.”
FOX 5 spoke to the mother of a student in the class, who requested anonymity to protect her child.
“My husband picked up our child after school and there was a lot of sobbing and crying and distress,” the mother said.
She said her child was still struggling emotionally after being told to pretend to choke and die in a gas chamber and watching students simulate digging their own graves.
She said she’s also had conversations with other parents about how their kids are doing.
“They are traumatized. One parent said that their child was worried the teacher in question was hiding at their house. Children are having nightmares and generally having a very hard time,” she said.
She said the child who was told to play Hitler is “not doing well at all.”
“The instructor allegedly made antisemitic comments during the reenactment. The parent said that when the children asked why the Germans did this, the staff member said it was “because the Jews ruined Christmas.”
The instructor asked students after the reenactment not to tell anyone about it, but they told their homeroom teacher, the parent said.”
So this educator is telling kids that Hitler hated the Jews because “they ruined Christmas”?
Don’t know much about history: The Nazis Fought the Original War on Christmas.