Cali Teacher Assigns Essay Questioning Holocaust

Oh no. An eighth-grade teacher at Rialto Unified School District in California took a Holocaust assignment to the extreme, asking his students to argue whether or not the mass murder of six million Jews and other targeted groups of people actually happened — or if it was "merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and gain wealth." Please, pick your jaw up off the ground. What's worse is that Holocaust Remembrance Day was just last week. Last week.

The anonymous teacher who handed out the 18-page assignment, which was actually created by a group of the school district's teachers, included just three sources — History.com, About.com, and BibleBelievers.org. The latter is a site that features the work of Mark Weber, a man who actually went so far as to create a group solely dedicated to denying that the Holocaust did, in fact, happen. Which speaks for itself, and is probably why parents quickly contacted the school to file complaints about the assignment, which has since been altered.

The Anti-Defamation League caught wind of this assignment and did some investigating. According to the Washington Post, ADL released the following statement to the school district: "It is ADL's general position that an exercise asking students to question whether the Holocaust happened has no academic value; it only gives legitimacy to the hateful and anti-Semitic promoters of Holocaust Denial." Through ADL's investigation, they found that the teacher was "misguided" in trying to assign a critical thinking assignment, and is not an anti-Semite involved with a larger group.

On Monday, Republican Tennessee State Senator Stacey Campfield compared signing up for Obamacare to the train rides to concentration camps during the Holocaust.

As reported by Bustle:

That’s right. Campfield compared legislation that gives healthcare to all Americans to the sufferings endured by those in the Holocaust. And as awful as it is, Campfield’s accusation isn’t all that original either — in January last year, Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll of Idaho made the exact same comparison, saying “Much like the Jews boarding the trains to concentration camps, private insurers are used by the feds to put the system in place because the federal government has no way to set up the exchange.”

Campfield has since posted a second entry addressing his remarks, saying “It was not to offend. It was to warn.” Nowhere in the post, however, does he apologize for the offensive comments. Cheekily titled “Here you go,” it may be just as bad as the original.

Credit: Twitter/@StandNow