SWC Action Following Rialto Holocaust Assignment: 2,000 Middle School Students to Visit Museum of Tolerance by June

"The Nazi Holocaustis the most documented crime in human history and it is difficult to conceive that there would be such a phenomenon as Holocaust Denial…there are leaders inIran, neo-Nazis here and in Europe, even pseudo-intellectuals who insist the Holocaust never happened, that Anne Frank and the 1.5 million Jewish kids neverlived, that her diary is a fraud…"

— Rabbi Cooper to the Rialto Unified School District during an emergency board meeting

A writing assignment to over 2,000 middle school students in California asking them to, "consider whether the Holocaust actually happened or was merely apolitical scheme created to influence public emotion and gain" and to then "interpret three sources including one which describes the Holocaust and "The Diary ofAnne Frank" as a hoax" led the Simon Wiesenthal Center to take action.

As a result of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's intervention all 2,000 graduating 8th graders from the Rialto school district in California who were exposedto this assignment will spend three hours at the Museum of Tolerance before they graduate on June 6th. Students will also visit the Museum's new interactiveexhibit, "Anne: The Life and Legacy of Anne Frank".

Teacher training for the Rialto School District will begin later this Summer. The five teachers involved with this 'assignment' have yet toapologize or be held accountable.

Please see this morning's Los Angeles Times op-ed, "A Holocaust lesson: What was at stake in Rialto was not just the truth of history"

A Holocaust lesson: What was at stake in Rialtowas not just the truth of history
By Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman

A lot of people apparently thought it was a good idea. Five teachers in the Rialto Unified School District developed the program, which was intended to improvethe critical thinking skills of eighth-graders. And administrators signed off on it.
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