Schools in Virginia allow opt-out from Holocaust lessons

The school board of Fairfax County, Virginia, is doing something terrible they won't do with LGBT ideology:

Virginia’s largest school district will let students skip a presentation from a Holocaust survivor, saying the diverse district includes students with “different experiences.”

“We understand that all students have different experiences. If you prefer to opt your child out from participating in this presentation, please email your child’s history teacher and they will be provided an alternate assignment. Please email your child’s history teacher with any questions that you may have,” a letter from Cooper Middle School said.

The letter referred to a scheduled presentation from a Holocaust survivor to seventh-graders, according to Adele Scalia, a mother of one of those middle schoolers.

[...] Scalia said on social media that she is drawing “less charitable (but more likely) conclusions.” The Left has been pressured by Islamic extremists to demonize Israel following Hamas’ terrorist attacks on the Jewish nation on October 7, and liberals have used the same language of “colonization” and “oppression” that they apply to whites in the U.S. to Israelis.

“If the email had said ‘We understand that some students are very sensitive and Mrs. X’s stories my be disturbing and traumatizing to them…’ I would have given them the benefit of the doubt. But it didn’t,” Scalia wrote.

Fairfax County contains a hotbed of Muslim extremism. A mosque there, attended by several 9/11 hijackers as well as the Fort Hood terrorist, was presided over by the father of Abrar Omeish, who until this year was a member of the Fairfax County school board. Omeish voted against an FCPS resolution offering a moment of silence for victims of 9/11 and another for victims of October’s Hamas attacks on Israel, said the decisive World War II victor at Iwo Jima was “unfortunate,” and gave a graduation speech encouraging students to “remember your jihad” and reject capitalism.

This definitely says quite a bit, right down to how the manager of a mosque is allowed on the school board, and even desecrated the memory of 9-11 victims. This also makes clear the sad path the USA is regrettably headed on if something isn't done to put a stop to this indoctrination.

The opt-out of the Holocaust lesson in FCPS, whose school board is entirely Democrat, is a reversal from the Left’s position on opt-outs on topics like transgenderism and anti-racism, which typically holds that hard truths are often uncomfortable, that it is the role of a school to instill certain values, and that on some issues, there are not two sides, but only good and evil.

[...] With some people claiming that the Holocaust did not even occur, the lesson is one of the last chances to hear from someone who survived it first-hand, as survivors are perishing of old age.

Prior to the election of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a video promoted by Virginia’s state Department of Education, then presided over by Democrat Atif Qarni, sought to dampen the emotional resonance of 9/11, advising teachers not to call it “terrorism” and to focus on “anti-Muslim racism” while making sure not “to reproduce what’s understood as American exceptionalism.”

This is the most terrible part about Virgina, how, Youngkin's election notwithstanding, there remains a considerable amount of far-left influence, and now it's resulted in a truly awful situation. It's clear Virginia has a serious problem with misogyny, anti-Semitism, and the Religion of Peace is really going to make things awful soon enough. Maybe most grating about the whole matter is that, if LGBT ideology is cleared away from schools in Fairfax, it'll only be due to Muslim influence, not because Judeo-Christians, Hinduists and Buddhists ask for it to stop. That's one of the worst things about "protected class" statuses.

January 27: Holocaust Remembrance Day

See Every year on Holocaust Memorial Day, I'll light a candle. But why?

Brief excerpt:

...[W]hen I visited Prague's famous Jewish cemetery on the Czech Republic leg of our misery tour, I saw something that disgusted me. As I walked through the site, which reminded me of a mouth crowded with crooked, grey teeth, I saw a man spit on the ground....

Auschwitz

Has the world forgotten?

Has the world become inured?


[hat tip to Mark Alexander of A New Dark Age Is Dawning for the above video]

Today in 1945 …NEVER FORGET WHAT DOING NOTHING BECAUSE EVIL IS TOO HARD TO BELIEVE CAN DO

From Scrapbookpages

German civilians tour Buchenwald Camp

Weimar residents forced to look at rotting corpses

After the Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated on April 11, 1945, the political prisoners in the camp set up a tour of exhibits. On April 15, 1945, the German civilians from the nearby town of Weimar were brought to see the evidence of Nazi atrocities.

Famous photographer Margaret Burke-White arrived at Buchenwald on the 15th of April, just as a procession of German townspeople entered the camp, according to the Buchenwald Report. Her shot of a German woman, wearing walking shoes and her Sunday dress, hiding her eyes in shame, was one of several that were published in Life magazine. Another photo taken by Burke-White is shown below.

Weimar residents view exhibits in Buchenwald

General George S. Patton wrote in his autobiography that the number of Weimar citizens brought to the camp was 1,500, although other accounts say it was 2,000. The German civilians had to march five miles up a steep hill, escorted by armed American soldiers. It took two days for the Weimar residents to file through the camp. No precautions were taken to protect them from the typhus epidemic in the camp.

German citizens on their visit to Buchenwald are shown in this YouTube video.

General Patton had visited the Ohrdruf sub-camp of Buchenwald on April 12, 1945 along with General Omar Bradley and General Dwight D. Eisenhower. On April 15, 1945, the day that he visited Buchenwald, General George S. Patton wrote the following in a letter to General Dwight D. Eisenhower:

We have found at a place four miles north of WEIMAR a similar camp, only much worse. The normal population was 25,000, and they died at the rate of about a hundred a day. The burning arrangements, according to General Gay and Colonel Codman who visited it yesterday, were far superior to those they had at OHRDRUF.

I told the press to go up there and see it, and then write as much about it as they could. I also called General Bradley last night and suggested that you send selected individuals from the upper strata of the press to look at it, so that you can build another page of the necessary evidence as to the brutality of the Germans.

General Eisenhower did not visit Buchenwald himself, but he did follow General Patton’s advice to “build another page” about the”brutality of the Germans.” A group of “upper strata” reporters were flown to Germany, arriving at Buchenwald on April 24, 1945, and given the grand tour of the Buchenwald atrocities.

The photo below shows one of the barrack buildings that had exhibits prepared for visitors.

Sign on door into barrack building

A few of the Jewish survivors, wearing their striped prison uniforms, sat at a table in one of the barracks, ready to confront the German civilians with stories of what they had suffered at the hands of the Nazis. There were 4,000 Jews in the Buchenwald camp when the American liberators arrived, and most of them had previously been at Auschwitz or other camps in the east.

“We didn’t know.” This was what the German civilian population would say over and over again about the concentration camps in the coming months. The American army was determined that the ordinary German people should see the depths of depravity to which their Nazis leaders had sunk.

German civilians look on as survivors watch two men move the corpses

Photo Credit: USHMM

Wagon filled with corpses at Buchenwald crematorium, April 18, 1945

Photo credit: Ardean R. Miller, U.S. Army Signal Corps

At his trial before an American Military Tribunal at Dachau, after the war, the last Commandant of Buchenwald, Hermann Pister, claimed that there were no bodies “lying around” when the camp was liberated. The photo above, taken a week after the camp was liberated, shows a wagon loaded with corpses outside the Buchenwald crematorium. Pister claimed that the bodies on display were those of prisoners who died after the camp was liberated. (In the background of the photo is the camp zoo with a cave for the bears.)

In the photo below, famous photographer Margaret Bourke-White takes a reading with a light meter in preparation for photographing a group of German civilians who are being brought to see a wagon load of corpses. This photo was taken on April 16th, the second day that a group of German civilians were brought from Weimar to see the bodies of the typhus victims.

Margaret Bourke-White prepares to take a photo of corpses, April 16, 1945

Photo Credit: USHMM

The two photos immediately above are from the collection of Lt. Col. Parke O. Yingst, Commander of the 281st Combat Engineers Battalion, who arrived at Buchenwald after the camp was liberated.

Weimar civilians are confronted with wagon load of corpses, April 16, 1945

The first news reel film about the German war crimes, that was shown in American theaters near the end of the war, included some scenes of German civilians, being forced to “atone” for what their countrymen did, by burying the bodies found in the camp. One of the crematory ovens was shown with the body of a prisoner in a striped uniform visible inside, as the narrator said that prisoners had been “burned alive” at Buchenwald. The narrator of the film said that what the Americans found at Buchenwald had “changed the name of Germany to infamy.”

It took years of rehabilitation by the Allies before the German people turned against the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler, “the people’s Chancellor,” whom they had once worshiped. Now the Germans look upon their defeat in World War II as their liberation from the Nazis.

The year 2005 marked the 60ieth anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and ceremonies took place at many of the former camps to mark the dates, so that the horror will never be forgotten.

The following quote is from a CBS news story in 2005 about the anniversary ceremony at Buchenwald:

About 1,000 people gathered in a cold drizzle as German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and camp survivors observed a minute of silence and placed flowers where prisoners were forced to assemble.

Earlier, Schroeder expressed shame in Germany’s name and honored the victims in a ceremony at Weimar’s National Theater, a symbol of the city’s classical cultural heritage.”They fell victim to hunger, sickness, the sadistic terror and systematic murder,” Schroeder said in a speech. “I bow before you, the victims and their families.”

[…]

The official ceremony was part of a weekend of commemorations. It began with music by Ludwig van Beethoven, a representative of the cultured Germany of which Schroeder said the Nazis were “the absolute negation.”

A women’s choir sang a song written by two Austrian inmates at Buchenwald that became the secret camp anthem.

“Oh Buchenwald, I cannot forget you, because you are my destiny,” they sang. “Only those who leave you can grasp how wonderful freedom is.”

Former inmates recalled the stench of the crematoriums, the beatings and the forced labor. They worried that the world will find it harder to understand what happened under the Nazis once the survivors are gone.

“In a certain sense the cycle of active memory is closing, with the vow not only to cast our eyes back upon the past but also to look forward to the future,” said Spanish writer and former culture minister Jorge Semprún, himself a former Buchenwald inmate.

Jorge Semprún was born in Spain in 1923; his family moved to France after the Spanish Civil War ended with the defeat of the Communists. When France was occupied by Germany in 1940, Semprún joined the Communist Resistance group called Francs-Tireurs et Partisans. Semprún was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and deported to Buchenwald. As a partisan who was fighting as an illegal combatant without protection under the Geneva Convention of 1929, Semprún could have been legally executed, but he was sent to Buchenwald instead. After the war, Semprún wrote two fictional accounts of his life in the Buchenwald camp: The Long Voyage and What a Beautiful Sunday. As a Communist, Semprún was part of the privileged group of prisoners at Buchenwald; he had an easy job in the camp, keeping records for the work groups.

Exhibits at Buchenwald

Buchenwald Orphans

Old photos of Buchenwald

Congressmen & Reporters

Edward R. Murrow Report

Liberation Claims

Liberation Day

Buchenwald Survivors

Back to Buchenwald Liberation

The Paper Clip Project

Hat tip to Debbie of Right Truth

As a teacher, I can see how powerful such a project can be:

Posts for Nov 7th: Lybian newspaper suspended, Al-Awlaki's influence, Spying AQ, Commemorating intifada, French "youths" attack Catholic Mass, Professor denies Holocaust, British Abu Hamza, Terrorist arrested, Kosovo's headscarf ban, "Education" for Islamic apostates, Mosque bombings, silence of Muslim leaders

1. Lybia: Pro-reform newspaper suspended. The Libyan government has suspended printing of a newspaper controlled by a reformist son of leader Muammar Gaddafi, local media reported, in what could be the latest phase in a power struggle inside the oil exporting state. The newspaper had accused the Govt of not tackling corruption.
2. UK: Al-Awlaki sermons influenced Muslim woman to stab British MP. Roshanara Choudhry, a 21-year-old student who has been jailed for life for trying to assassinate British MP Stephen Timms in May this year, told police she had wanted to die as a martyr after watching more than 100 hours of video sermons from the American-born extremist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki on the internet.
3. Terror: Spy agencies have infiltrated AQ. The case of Rahman (an ex-GITMO who spied the Taliban and who was killed after they discovered it), which Shah (the Taliban spokeman) recounted to The Associated Press, falls in line with a key aspect of the fight against terror — Western intelligence agencies, with help from Islamic allies, are placing moles and informants inside al-Qaida and the Taliban. The program seems to be bearing fruit, even as many infiltrators like Rahman are discovered and killed.
4. UK: Venezuelan embassy to commemorate intifada: The intifada was “at the forefront of the world struggle against white supremacist neo-colonialism and settler-colonialism,” according to the embassy.
5. France: "youths" throw stones and pine cones at Catholics during All Souls' mass: 150 people attending the memorial service for the dead late Tuesday afternoon in a church in a sensitive area of Carcassonne, were victims of two teenagers (between 13 and 14 years),who, after entering the building, they began throwing stones and pine cones to the faithful. One person was hit. In addition, a statue of the Virgin, targeted by the young snatchers, was damaged.
6. US: Vanderbilt radical professor denies Holocaust: Kaukab Siddique, associate professor of English at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, is an Islamic radical who demonizes Jews, mocks Holocaust victims and calls on Muslims to “liberate” Jerusalem.
7. UK: Citizenship restored to cleric wanted on terrorism charges on the US: A British government ruling stripping the Egyptian-born Muslim cleric known as Abu Hamza al-Masri of his British citizenship was struck down Friday by a special immigration court. But government officials said the court’s action would not affect the government’s plan to extradite the cleric to the United States, where he is wanted on terrorism charges. Officials in the office of Home Secretary Theresa May said no decision had been made on whether to appeal the immigration court’s ruling to a higher British court.
8. Germany: terrorist suspect arrested in Saarland region. The man demanded the release of an imprisoned member of the so-called Sauerland group which attempted to blow up US army bases in Germany in 2007.
9. Kosovo: Headscarf ban sparks debate over country's identity: The government decided to forbid the wearing of headscarves in public schools late last year, in accordance with the constitution that declares Kosovo – which unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008 – a secular country. “The scarf in Kosovo is not an element of our identity. It’s a sign of submission of female to male, rather than a sign of choice“, Kosovo’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Vlora Citaku explains.
10. "Islam not invasive": "retreat centers" for Christian converts from Islam in Malaysia: A two-hour journey from the capital city of Kuala Lumpur revealed an isolated encampment where some Christian converts say they’ve been taken in order to be forced back to Islam.
11. Pakistan: Death toll in mosques' bombing over 70. The mosques belong to Ahmaddiya community. The death toll right now is of 95.
12. Salim Mansur: "We have a deadly silence of the Muslim leadership": " we have deathly silence of the Muslim leadership as non-Muslim minorities inside the Arab-Muslim world are routinely abused, their homes and places of worship under daily duress, and their hearts filled with fear of violent death in the hands of Muslim jihadis."

Builders find Auschwitz message

Builders working near the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp have found a message in a bottle written by prisoners, museum officials say.

BBC The message, written in pencil and dated 9 September 1944, bears names, camp numbers and home towns of seven young inmates from Poland and France.

At least two survived the Nazi camp, an Auschwitz museum official said.

The bottle was buried in a concrete wall in a school that prisoners had been compelled to reinforce.

The school's buildings, a few hundred metres from the camp, were used as warehouses by the Nazis, who wanted them protected against air raids.

Museum experts have checked the authenticity of the note, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Six of the prisoners were from Poland and one was from France, AP said.

"All of them are between the ages of 18 and 20," the final sentence of the note reads.

An Auschwitz museum spokesman said the authors of the note "were young people who were trying to leave some trace of their existence behind them".

The Nazis murdered some 1.1 million people at Auschwitz - mainly European Jews, but also non-Jewish Poles, Roma (Gypsies) and others.

Good For Him!

President Nicolas Sarkozy dropped an "intellectual bombshell" this week, surprising the nation and touching off waves of protest with his revision of the school curriculum: beginning next fall, he said, every fifth grader will have to learn the life story of one of the 11,000 French children killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust.

Read the whole article in the New York Times.

The article says: "Political opponents dismissed the plan as his latest misguided idea, unveiled without reflection or consultation. Some historians argued that the focus on victims could steer attention away from the Vichy government’s collaboration with the Nazis. Still others warned that the plan could backfire, creating resentment among France’s ethnic Arab and African populations if they felt their own histories were getting short shrift."

I don't know this for sure, but I read this paragraph more like this: "Muslims and multiculturalists criticized the plan in every way they could think of that would sound reasonable and plausible. The Muslims and their appeasers gave a subtle, underhanded warning that denying them their holocaust denial would result in uprisings and violence."

I couldn't help but see Sarkozy's plan as a direct opposition to the Muslims' denial of the holocaust. If so, I think it's a victory for our side.

It Came From Within - 70 Years Since Kristallnacht

On November 9, 1938, the Nazis unleashed a series of riots against the Jews in Germany and Austria. In the space of a few hours, thousands of synagogues and Jewish businesses and homes were damaged or destroyed. For the first time, tens of thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps simply because they were Jewish. This event came to be called Kristallnacht ("Night of the Broken Glass") for the shattered store windowpanes that carpeted German streets. (Cont'd).
[Discuss]

Related:

1. New effort launched to fight anti-Semitism- The international task force, led this year by Austria, teamed up with the Council of Europe in a bid to more closely coordinate education and public awareness efforts to combat acts of hatred against Jews. (read it all)
[Discuss]

2. The path to Hitler's "final solution" has branched and deviated since his death, but it's fundamental principle remains the same.

Antisemitism did not end with WWII, and it's seen a fresh resurgence in recent years. While some might have you believe that talk of antisemitism is merely a ploy on the part of Jews to divert attention or curry some advantage, the threat it poses cannot be ignored.

In an age of rogue nations armed with WMD, a worldwide Islamic jihad and the resurgence of various hard-left and hard-right militias, how long before someone will successfully enact Hitler's 'final solution'? Video: The Path to the Final Solution

3. Online slide show: The ''new'' anti-Semitism:

We have been witnessing the rebirth of a new wave of anti-Semitism. Is it classic anti-Semitism -A world free of Jews- or a new form of anti-Semitism- A world free of a Jewish state?

What are the reasons for this new outbreak? What characterizes this new wave of anti-Semitism?

What is the connection between the Radical Islamic movement and the new wave of anti-Semitism? Online presentation: Pipeline of Hatred.
[Discuss]



(Cross-posted on A Deeper Look)

60th Anniversary Celebrations Won’t Save Israel from Annihilation, Says Ahmadinejad

Map of Israel courtesy of Google Images
YNET NEWS: Iranian president says anniversary celebrations won't save Jewish state from 'annihilation' by Middle Eastern nations

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that Israel is dying and that its 60th anniversary celebrations are an attempt to prevent its ''annihilation.''

His remarks coincided with the arrival of US President George W. Bush in the Middle East to celebrate Israel's 60th birthday and try to revitalize peace efforts.

''The Zionist (Israeli) regime is dying,'' said Ahmadinejad during a speech in the northern Iranian city of Gorgan. ''The criminals assume that by holding celebrations ... they can save the sinister Zionist regime from death and annihilation.''

The hardline Iranian president used an Arabic word, ismihlal, that can also be translated as destruction, death and collapse.

"They should know that regional nations hate this fake and criminal regime and if the smallest and briefest chance is given to regional nations they will destroy (it)," said Ahmadinejad, who often rails against Israel and the United States.

Iran doesn't recognize Israel, and Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for Israel's destruction. The threatening exchanges between Iran and Israel have intensified since 2005, when Ahmadinejad said in a speech that Israel will one day be ''wiped off the map.'' The Iranian leader has also alleged that the Holocaust was a ''myth.'' Ahmadinejad: Israel Is ‘Dying’ >>> | May 14, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – USA)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardcover – USA)

Rafsanjani, the "moderate"

“Europe resolved a great problem - the problem of the Zionist Danger.

The Zionists, who constituted a strong political party in Europe, caused much disorder there. (Someone has known about a Zionist European political party in 1900?)

Since they had a lot of property and controlled an empire of propaganda, they made the European governments helpless (oops, I'm learning so much "European History" today) .

What Hitler and the German Nazis did to the Jews of Europe at that time was partly due to these circumstances with the Jews (oops, but the Holocaust, wasn't just an invention from evil Westerners? weren't many doubts there which should be investigated?).

They wanted to expel the Zionists from Europe because they always were a pain in the neck for the governments there (of course, you nailed it. The only or the main problem of Europe from 1900 to 1930's were the properties of the Jews and their "empire controlled propaganda". The communism, the fascism, the nazism -uups, this was not a problem, it fighted the evil Joooooooossssssssss- or the wars that preceded the fall of the Ottoman Empire, were nothing... :evil: ).

This is how calamity fell upon the Muslims, especially the Palestinians, and you all know this history, more or less. (more or less? would you be so kind as to explain this evil Crusader-Zionist-Westerner-Infidel-Catholic-Spanish female -oops, yeah, I'm all of that....... I'm beginning to be scared of myself... ) if it was more more than less, or if it was more less than more??? Of course, the Muslim world was totally in decline since the Middle Ages, BUT the culprits of the calamity are the possessions of the Jewish people in Europe... I'm going to present this man for Hollywood Film Awards -preferably the Oscars- or maybe for the Nobel Prize, that is so renknown nowadays....  )

The first goal was to save Europe from the evil of Zionism, and in this, they have been relatively successful. (hmm, are you saying what I am thinking you're saying? Are you really trying to copy Hitler?? Well, no, but yes, we want peace with everyone ... except with Israel. Oh, yeah, I know, they are Zionsits of the possessions and the propaganda”... 

More here. 

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