Reports that children at a strictly Orthodox school are being taught that “non-Jews are evil” are “wrong, false” and “sensational”, according to the school.
The Independent newspaper reported that the Beis Rochel D’Satmar Girls’ school in Hackney, east London, was using a worksheet aimed at “British three-year-olds” which made no distinction between Nazis and non-Jews.
According to the paper, a whistleblower had revealed that the worksheet referred to Nazis only as goyim, then asked in Yiddish: “What have the evil goyim done with the synagogues and cheders?” – to which the answer reads: “Burned them.”
The unnamed source told the Independent: “It doesn’t explicitly refer to the Holocaust. It’s a document that teaches very young children to be very afraid and treat non-Jews very suspiciously because of what they did to us in the past.”
But according to PR executive Shimon Cohen, speaking on behalf of the school, the newpaper failed to understand the fact that, in context, the term goyim explicitly meant Nazis.
He said: “The leaflet that the Independent refers to was handed out on the 21 Kislev, when the Satmar Jews celebrate the rescue of their founding rabbi from Bergen-Belsen.
“The questions were only talking about the specific event, but there is no Yiddish word for Nazis. The suggestion that children are being taught that non-Jews are evil is nonsense and simply false. They are being taught that Nazis are evil.”
He continued: “It is almost like, if you are sitting around a seder table and you say that the goyim made us build pyramids, you are obviously talking about the Egyptians. You’re not talking about the Welsh. It’s just daft.”
Mr Cohen said that, next year, the school would explicitly refer to Nazis to avoid any confusion. “We will be very clear to avoid any misunderstanding,” he said. “But then, for Yiddish speakers, it was clear. This is a storm in a tea-cup.”
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