Assessment: 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 …
A D.C.-area elementary school was forced to apologize on Friday for requiring third-graders to participate in a Holocaust re-enactment, right down to digging mass graves and pretending to shoot each other.
One “lucky” kiddo got the pleasure of role-playing as Adolph Hitler, complete with a mock suicide.
“Alas! For that day is great, So that none is like it; And it is the time of Jacob’s trouble, But he shall be saved out of it.” Jeremiah 30:7
This is a far cry from middle-aged guys in vintage uniforms pretending to shoot each other on Civil War battlefields.
The Watkins Elementary School teacher who did all this has not been named but has been placed on leave pending an investigation, according to JustTheNews.
School principal MScott Berkowitz emailed concerned parents that he wants “to acknowledge the gravity of this poor instructional decision, as students should never be asked to act out or portray any atrocity, especially genocide, war, or murder.”
One parent became concerned when her child came home with stories about how he “had to pretend to be on a train to a concentration camp, then act as if he were dying in a gas chamber.” The child assigned to play Hitler was Jewish, according to the Washington Post:
The instructor asked students after the reenactment not to tell anyone about it, but they told their homeroom teacher, the parent said.
