Texas School Under Fire for Suggesting Teaching Holocaust Denial
An administrator in Texas’s Carroll Independent School District told teachers that a new state law requires them to offer “opposing” views of the Holocaust in their teaching. Texas’s House Bill 3979 “requires teachers to present multiple perspectives when discussing ‘widely debated and currently controversial’ issues,” NBC News reported. A recording of a training session with teachers caught the exchange.
“Just try to remember the concepts of [House Bill] 3979,” the administrator said. “And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.”
“How do you oppose the Holocaust?” one teacher responded.
“Believe me,” the administrator said. “That’s come up.”
The administrator walked back her comments, calling them “assuredly a misstep,” and the district’s superintendent apologized for the remarks, saying, “The comments made were in no way to convey that the Holocaust was anything less than a terrible event in history. Additionally, we recognize there are not two sides of the Holocaust,” israelnationalnews.com said.
But Jewish people in the district have rallied to voice their displeasure. Rob Forst, a parent in the district and a descendant of Holocaust survivors, attended a school board meeting to denounce the comments, calling them “completely unacceptable.” Jake Berman, an alumnus who was subjected to anti-Semitic bullying as a student, shared his experiences, saying, “I received everything from jokes about my nose to gas chambers, all while studying for my bar mitzvah from a Holocaust survivor as my primary tutor. The message you and the state are sending to your teachers opens the door for more of this type of behavior in your students. If you don’t think that these same attacks are happening in your schools today with regard to someone’s skin color, gender or religion, you are sorely mistaken.”
Culture is grayer than ever. I mean that where things were once black-and-white, clear-cut, fact-of-the-matter truths, almost everything has been made relative. This simply should not be when it comes to morality and historical fact. The Holocaust checks both of those boxes. There is no reasonable argument to be made to deny the Holocaust. It’s not ancient history by any means—survivors are still alive today!—and attempts to wash it away fall flat. There’s also no justification to ever deny the horrific nature of the Holocaust. Nothing justifies the systematic murder of 6 million Jews and the attempted extermination of the Jewish race. Hopefully this doesn’t progress any further, and the administrator’s admission of a mistake was a positive step. But if this opens the door for legally mandated teaching of Holocaust denial, we’re going to have a problem.
