School authorities today suspended 18 students at Gwynn Falls Junior High School in an inquiry into the reported beating and branding of a 15-year-old Jewish student and a resultant fight between the boy’s friends and pro-Nazi students on the school grounds. One official said a “Junior Bund” patterned after the German-American Bund was operating at the school.
City Councilman Leon Abramson said he would try to find out why school authorities had not reported the matter to the police when it occurred on Friday. The boy, Melvin Bridge, son of a delicatessen owner, was said to have been set upon by youths wearing swastika armbands, who scratched a large “H” for “Hebrew” into his back with a penknife. As a result, a fight occurred on the school grounds yesterday as classes were being dismissed, in which adults were reported to have participated. One person was arrested and one taken to the hospital.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.