A staff member at the Watkins Elementary School in Washington DC has been suspended after making third-grade children reenact scenes from the Holocaust.
The teacher got them to pretend to dig mass graves and shoot victims. She told them that the Germans were angry ‘because the Jews ruined Christmas’. The incident occurred last Friday.
‘There was a lot of sobbing and crying and distress and then momentarily we got an email to say that the children had reenacted the Holocaust,’ one parent said. ‘This included the trains, dying in gas chambers, playing Hitler and mass graves.’
Some children were given specific roles; a Jewish child was told to portray Adolf Hitler and then to pretend to commit suicide at the end of the exercise.
Others were told to dig their classmates’ mass graves and simulate shooting the victims.
The teacher allegedly made antisemitic comments during the reenactment.
Another student was told to pretend to be on a train to a death camp and act as if he was dying in a gas chamber. In another scene, he was told to simulate shooting his classmates.
‘I want 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,’ the principal said in an email to parents.
The teacher told the children not to tell anyone about the activity, but they told their class teacher.
A complaint has been referred to the DC Public Schools’ Central Equity Response Team.
‘This was not an approved lesson plan, and we sincerely apologize to our students and families who were subjected to this incident,’ a spokesperson for DCPS said.