The Anti-Defamation League of B’nat B’rith has lodged a complaint with Dr. Lloyd N. Peak, school superintendent in Watkins Glen, New York, objecting to a student newspaper article mocking the Holocaust. According to Beth D. Randall, ADL’s New York State director, the reference about Jews in the April Fool’s issue of “Echo, ” student paper at Watkins Glen High School “surpass the realm of a joke in bad taste” and serve as “examples of raw anti-Semitism.”
A news item in the school paper featured a new fast food menu consisting of “Beans Anne Frank,” “Holocaust and Cheese,” “Fruit Jews,” and “Straight Jews.” It also offered “a free swastika patch” and “a toy gas mask (while suplies last).”
Ms. Randall said that to poke fun at the Holocaust in the paper “seems to give blanket approval to anti-Semitism among the students. Anne Frank was only slightly younger than most of the students when she was marched off to the gas chamber of Auschwitz. It is difficult to understand the humor in that act.”
Inquiring what action has been taken in response to the bigoted article, Ms. Randall suggested that Peak propose a course of study in the Watkins Glen district. “It is essential, “she observed, “that the school system take a stand in order to set the tone of brotherhood rather than bigotry.”
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.
