A D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) staffer has reportedly been placed on leave after allegedly asking third-grade students to re-enact Holocaust events such as digging their graves and acting out shooting scenes. The DCPS said it is investigating the report.
In a Washington Post report, it was revealed that a staff member of the Watkins Elementary School asked students to pretend that they were digging ditches to serve as mass graves. The students were also reportedly asked to act out that they were shooting victims.
A parent told the Post that the staff member also said that Germans during the Holocaust were triggered by the belief that “Jews ruined Christmas.”
Speaking with Fox 5, a mother of a student in the class said that “there was a lot of sobbing and crying and distress” after the child’s father picked up the student from school. The mother said her child was told by the librarian who gave the lesson to pretend that the child was choking and dying in a gas chamber as other students pretended to dig their own graves.
“Children are having nightmares and generally having a very hard time.” The mother, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect her child’s privacy, added that the student who was asked to play Nazi leader Adolf Hitler is currently “not doing well at all.”
The mother further revealed that the librarian in question told the students not to inform their parents about the incident.
Read the article by in the International Business Times.