‘I can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event.’

There is a petition asking for the resignation of a Florida principal who wrote that he could not say the Holocaust was a “factual, historical event.” He should be fired. Period. But sign it anyway. SIGN PETITION HERE.

The things I saw beggar description. While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me sick. In one room, where they [there] were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said he would get sick if he did so.

I MADE THE VISIT DELIBERATELY, IN ORDER TO BE IN POSITION TO GIVE FIRST-HAND EVIDENCE OF THESE THINGS IF EVER, IN THE FUTURE, THERE DEVELOPS A TENDENCY TO CHARGE THESE ALLEGATIONS MERELY TO ‘PROPAGANDA’.” – Letter, DDE to George C. Marshall, 4/15/45 [The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, The War Years IV, doc Number 2418] “We continue to uncover German concentration camps for political prisoners in which conditions of indescribable horror prevail. I have visited one of these myself and I assure you that whatever has been printed on them to date has been understatement. If you would see any advantage in asking about a dozen leaders of Congress and a dozen prominent editors to make a short visit to this theater in a couple of C-54s, I will arrange to have them conducted to one of these places where the evidence of bestiality and cruelty is so overpowering as to leave no doubt in their minds about the normal practices of the Germans in these camps.”

– Cable, DDE to George C. Marshall, 4/19/45 [The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, The War Years IV, doc Number 2424]

“When I found the first camp like that I think I never was so angry in my life. The bestiality displayed there was not merely piled up bodies of people that had starved to death, but to follow out the road and see where they tried to evacuate them so they could still work, you could see where they sprawled on the road. You could go to their burial pits and see horrors that really I wouldn’t even want to begin to describe. I think people ought to know about such things. It explains something of my attitude toward the German war criminal. I believe he must be punished, and I will hold out for that forever.”

At the end of World War II, General Eisenhower made a decision to personally visit as many Nazi concentration camps as he could. His reason? He wanted to document the camps and their appalling conditions.

Anticipating a time when Nazi atrocities might be denied, General Eisenhower also ordered the filming and photographing of camps as they were liberated. Members of the U.S. Army Signal Corps recorded approximately 80,000 feet of moving film, together with still photographs.

Within months after the war in Europe, about 6,000 feet of that film footage was excerpted to create a one-hour documentary called “Nazi Concentration Camp”. Prosecutors used the film, which is graphically gruesome, to prove that Nazi leaders, on trial at Nuremberg, had perpetrated unbelievably heinous crimes against humanity.

Thomas Dodd, one of the U.S. prosecutors, introduced the film into evidence on the 29th of November, 1945. When the lights came up, after the trial film was screened, people had a new understanding of what the words “concentration camp” really meant.

Eisenhower wanted to be in as many pictures as possible to prove the death camps really existed. He was sometimes accompanied by Generals Bradley and Patton (such as their visit to the Ohrdruf concentration camp on April 12, 1945).

FLORIDA PRINCIPAL: ‘I CAN’T SAY THE HOLOCAUST IS A FACTUAL, HISTORICAL EVENT’ United with Israel, July 7, 2019:

A petition has been formed asking for the resignation of a Florida principal who wrote that he could not say the Holocaust was a “factual, historical event.”

A mother from Boca Raton, Florida, has been fighting this past year with her son’s school district. She is demanding proper Holocaust education following the principal’s writing that he could not say that the Holocaust was a historical fact.

In April 2018, a mother, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her child’s identity, wrote to the principal of Spanish River High School, asking if Holocaust education was an educational “priority.”

SCHOOL PRINCIPAL DENIES HOLOCAUST The principal, William Latson, replied that the school ran a variety of activities, however, lessons were “not forced upon individuals as we all have the same rights but not all the same beliefs.”

The stunned mother, hoping that the principal had expressed himself poorly, asked for clarification, saying, “The Holocaust is a factual, historical event. It is not a right or a belief.”

According to email records obtained by The Palm Beach Post through a public records request, Latson responded, “Not everyone believes the Holocaust happened. And you have your thoughts, but we are a public school and not all of our parents have the same beliefs.”

He also claimed that as a school district employee, he must remain “politically neutral” on the topic. “I can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event because I am not in a position to do so as a school district employee,” he wrote.

CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED Following this principal’s shocking responses, the mother launched a year-long campaign, noting that Latson had failed to separate truth from myth about the Holocaust that claimed the lives of 6 million Jews along with millions of others.

Mothers gathered with Latson and the school board to discuss the disturbing letters as well as hoping to improve Holocaust education at the school.

Deputy School Superintendent Keith Oswald agreed that “Latson’s email messages were inappropriate but were not reflective of who he was as an educator,” according to the Post.

“It was a hastily, poorly written email that he apologized for,” Oswald said. “That’s some of the challenge that we face when we email back and forth instead of picking up the phone.”

As reported by the Post, the mother does not consider Latson anti-Semitic, nor does she believe that he thinks that the Holocaust never happened. However, she does suspect that his statements stem from fear of backlash from parents who do deny the reality of the Holocaust.

QUESTIONABLE APOLOGY In a statement to the Post, Latson apologized.

“I regret that the verbiage that I used when responding to an email message from a parent, one year ago, did not accurately reflect my professional and personal commitment to educating all students about the atrocities of the Holocaust,” he wrote. “It is critical that, as a society, we hold dear the memory of the victims and hold fast to our commitment to counter anti-Semitism.”

The mother’s activism caused the school district’s upper ranks to “grapple with whether and how to admonish a longtime principal of a high-performing school for his troubling statements,” reported the Post. However, as reported, Latson has not been formally disciplined for his statements.

According to the Post, the agreed-upon Holocaust educational changes have not been implemented.

SIGN THE PETITION “The Holocaust is a historical fact,” said Palm Beach County School Board member Karen Brill, the only Jewish member of the board, according to the records. “I am appalled that anyone in our district believes that its teaching may be opted out of.”

Brill added that she no longer has faith in Latson’s leadership, according to the minutes from the meeting obtained by the Post.

A petition has been set up asking Latson to resign.

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