Holocaust Survivor Speaks Out Amid Ongoing Spate of Antisemitic Incidents in Atlanta-Area Schools

A Holocaust survivor in Georgia is speaking out amid an ongoing spate of antisemitic incidents plaguing an Atlanta-area school system.

Last week, a Cobb County Schools spokesperson announced that several East Cobb Middle School students were facing disciplinary action after posting antisemitic imagery on social media.

This followed two graffiti incidents last fall in which swastikas were scrawled on the walls of Pope High School and Lassiter High School, which prompted the Cobb County School Board to adopt a resolution against antisemitism and racism.

After the latest incident, in which pictures were shared on social media by students of a boy wearing an arm band with a swastika, Holocaust survivor Hershel Greenblatt — who lost many family members in the Nazi genocide — told Fox 5 Atlanta, “We need actual meaningful education that teaches against hate.”

“People were killed in the most horrific ways and that swastika is a symbol of what happened,” he noted.

Watch the Fox 5 Atlanta interview with Greenblatt here:

Greenblatt frequently visits schools to speak with students about the Holocaust and pass on the grim historical lessons from the mass murder of six million Jews by the Nazis.

“I just want my great-grandson, who is four years old, to grow up in a world without hate,” he said.

Rabbi Larry Sernovitz of Temple Kol Emeth in East Cobb, Georgia, commented, “The school district has to have the courage not just to say this is no place for hate but to make it so.”

During the first two months of the current school year, the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) Information Hub detected and monitored a rise in Jew-hatred incidents at middle and high schools across the globe.

Schools are supposed to be safe havens where children can learn without facing physical threats, verbal harassment, and other forms of discrimination, and school officials and local authorities must take action to make this the reality for young Jews around the world.