The Holocaust was one of the most horrific occurrences in history, and no one should ever make light of it. One 11-year-old girl is fighting back after she was punished for telling her classmates to stop giving a Nazi salute.
The girl was participating in a “Living History” performance with her classmates.
The show included a segment about the Second World War, including a depiction of Adolf Hitler. But it was outside the rehearsals, during recess, that she saw students jokingly give the Nazi salute.
It wasn’t just an isolated incident, either.
Since the rehearsals started, students have been mimicking the salute for weeks all over campus, including in school hallways, classrooms, and on the playground. After the girl told her classmates to stop, it turned into a method of bullying. Other students continued to do the salute specifically to upset her.
When the young girl began to yell at them one day, she was sent to the principal’s office.
Now, her father is taking the Tennessee McFadden School of Excellence to task on social media, with tweets flooding in to support his daughter’s actions.
“Please comment with support for my 11-year-old daughter,” Keith Jacks Gamble tweeted. “She was removed from class and sent to the principal’s office for the rest of the day last Thursday for shouting, ‘Stop it, put your hands down now,’ to a group of students giving the Nazi salute.”
He says his daughter was deeply troubled by the consistent display of the “Sieg Heil” salute by her classmates.
She objected to them doing it each time it happened but her teachers told her to ignore it.
He says that on the day in question, his daughter yelled, “Stop it, put your hands down!” and was subsequently taken out of the class for being “disrespectful.” Then she was sent to the principal’s office.
A spokesman for Rutherford County Schools says that Gamble’s daughter was not punished for getting upset.
He says that school administrators agree that her classmates’ behavior was unacceptable and that she was taken out into the hallway to help her calm down.
“One student became upset and had an outburst,” said spokesman James Evans. “The teacher talked with her and tried to calm the student, but was unable to do so. The teacher took her to the hallway for approximately two minutes to calm down, but to no avail.”
Evans says the girl was taken to the principal’s office not as punishment but to discuss the incident and take a break.
He says she was there for about five minutes.
Since then, the school has had an assembly with the fifth-grade class to warn students about any further use of the Nazi salute. It has also sent a letter out to parents noting that administration does not condone hateful or racist gestures or attitudes. Meanwhile, the “Living History” performance has been edited to remove any segments depicting Hitler or the salute.
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Please comment with support for my 11-year-old daughter. She was removed from class and sent to the principal’s office for the rest of the day last Thursday for shouting, “Stop it, put your hands down now,” to a group of students giving the Nazi salute. pic.twitter.com/9d9LpI5V5r
— Keith Jacks Gamble (@KeithJGamble) May 14, 2019
