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A Massachusetts middle school principal has become the center of controversy after he reportedly issued an apology to students who "felt unseen" during a Holocaust education lesson.
A screenshot of the email, shared online by the advocacy organization StopAntisemitism, sparked criticism.
In the email, Diamond Middle School Principal Dr. Johnny Cole said the lesson was aimed at teaching the students to recognize hate and to speak out against it, something he called "an important goal." However, Cole then said that he was writing the email after some students' families had expressed that the lesson left them feeling "unseen."
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'Arbeit Macht Frei' sign at the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
"Some of you felt like your own history, your identity, or your community was left out or erased. Some of you left that session feeling less safe, not more. We have heard this from families, and we believe you," Cole wrote.
"We are sorry. Not because the topic was too hard; hard conversations are part of growing up and part of what we do here at Diamond. We are sorry because every one of you deserves to walk into this school and feel that who you are matters — Arab students; Jewish students; Lebanese students; Muslim students; Palestinian students — every student. And in this case, we missed the mark and did not achieve what we hoped to do," he added.
Cole said that the school was working with teachers and families to "build something better" that "includes all of our communities and all of our histories." He added that some students would be consulted in the building of the new program.
Critics slammed Cole's apology, with many of them saying that Holocaust education was not supposed to be comfortable.
"The lessons of the Holocaust are essential to understanding how antisemitism develops and manifests in modern society, and those who oppose teaching about the Holocaust and modern-day antisemitism often seek to distort historical facts to advance ideological narratives that undermine the Jewish experience and the lessons history teaches," StopAntisemitism said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital.
"School administrators have a responsibility to defend factual history, not retreat from it, and those unwilling to uphold that responsibility should carefully consider whether they are suited for positions of educational leadership. If this objective lunacy by bad actors isn’t stopped immediately, it’s going to spread like wildfire throughout the United States," the group added.
A Massachusetts middle school principal is facing backlash after apologizing to students who felt "unseen" during a Holocaust education lesson. (Kobus Louw via Getty Images)
Fox News analyst Guy Benson was among those who criticized Cole's apology, arguing that Holocaust education should not be tailored around students' feelings.
"The point of Holocaust education is not to protect Muslim students’ feelings, or whatever this claptrap suggests. It’s not about them," he said.
Hen Mazzig, an Israeli activist, also criticized the apology, arguing that Holocaust education should not require an apology.
"Speaking about the Nazi genocide that murdered 6 million Jews should not require an apology. We can educate one another on our histories and experiences," Mazzig wrote. "If someone walks from that feeling excluded, then perhaps they needed the lesson most of all."
Cole did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. Additionally, his email did not specify what aspects of the Holocaust lesson prompted complaints from students and families.
The controversy over Cole's apology follows a separate incident in which he allegedly made a student remove a sweatshirt that read "Save the bees. Plant more trees. Clean the seas. Punch Nazis."
The student who wore the sweatshirt, Teagan Murtagh, wrote about the incident in The Lexington Observer. Murtagh, the great-granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, wrote that her great-grandmother "didn't let all the terrible things she had seen and experienced stop her from living."
A middle school Holocaust education lesson reportedly left some students feeling uncomfortable. The principal's subsequent apology has drawn backlash. (Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
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"It must have taken so much bravery to believe that the world would not let the past repeat itself," Murtagh wrote.
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In the letter to the editor, Murtagh shared that she had continued wearing "other pointed shirts to school" as a form of "resistance against what I believe to be my principal's overreach." She said that subsequent meetings with Cole did not lead to any progress.
"My great-grandma endured so much when she was my age. I don’t know if I’ll ever be as strong as her, but at the very least I can do this," Murtagh wrote.
