Holocaust Re-Enactment for Third-Graders Is the Latest School Outrage

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.

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 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.

After all this, I have to ask: What’s there to investigate?

Name the teacher, fire her, drum her out of the education biz, and send the message that this kind of thing won’t be tolerated.

But this is the D.C. school system, which ranks 49th out of 51 nationally:

“D.C. specifically, had a lot to work on when it comes to its dropout rate; it’s the highest in the country,” said Jill Gonzalez, an analyst with WalletHub.

Gonzalez said the results, which did not take into account D.C.’s charter schools, showed one of every three high school students in D.C. are dropping out of school, including 40 percent of low-income students.

Clearly, there’s very little accountability in the District, which is supposed to be overseen by Congress.

Maybe now that Presidentish Joe Biden’s agenda has collapsed in Congress, they can tend towards matters closer to home.