The superintendent of a school district in Minnesota said the posting of a photo on social media of two students doing a Nazi salute will lead to more material in the curriculum about Hitler and the Holocaust.
The photo posted late last week on a private Instagram account, but circulated on social media, showed two high school students doing a Nazi salute and holding a sign with references to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. The sign was an invitation to the Minnetonka High School’s annual Valentine’s Day dance, called Sweethearts, the Star Tribune reported.
“Sweethearts would be a Hit(ler) w/you, and I could Nazi myself going w/anybody else. Be Mein? Yes or Nein,” said the sign.
Superintendent Dennis Peterson said in an email to district parents on Friday, a day after the photo was made public, that the students will be disciplined.
“The larger issue is that we, as a community, must do an even better job of educating students about Hitler and the Holocaust,” he wrote. “While we do units on this in middle school, and we have had several Holocaust survivors speak at MHS, it has apparently not been enough to prevent yesterday’s incident.”
Rabbi Tzvi Kupfer, adviser to the school’s Jewish Student Union, told the newspaper that some of his students said they no longer feel safe going to school.
On Friday, the female student issued an apology on a new, private Instagram page, according to the newspaper.
