Students at the Har Zion Temple Hebrew High School here were prompted by their study of the Holocaust to send a letter of sympathy to the Black community of Atlanta, Ga. in connection with the wave of killings of Black children in that city. When the letter was sent earlier this month addressed to Mayor Maynard Jackson of Atlanta, the toll of Black children killed stood at 15 and the murders remain unsolved.
According to Rabbi Gerald Wolpe of Har Zion Temple who taught the course, “the thought originated with the students after a discussion with me concerning the moral response to persecution. The theme of the discussion was the Holocaust but some students saw immediately the connection with the killings and the letter resulted,” Wolpe told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The letter stated: “We, the students of the Har Zion Temple High School, would like to express our
empathy with your community as you suffer the unfortunate killing of children in Atlanta. We feel that the prejudices that you are facing are a parallel to the resurgence of anti-Semitic acts all over the world today.
“It is unfortunate that these things are happening. We have been taught about the tragedy of the killing of many Jewish children in the Nazi concentration camps and the killing of innocent Jewish children by terrorists in the Middle East. We hope that these lessons learned have made us more sensitive to this tragedy.”
The letter concluded with “condolences to the families which have suffered great loss” and the “hope that soon, this bigotry will come to an end and all children will live in peace and without fear.”
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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.
