A teacher at an elementary and middle school in North York has been removed from the classroom after likening the Yellow Star of David used to identify Jews during the Holocaust to COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
Serge Parravano, the interim principal of Ledbury Park Elementary and Middle School near Bathurst and Lawrence, sent a letter to parents on Tuesday to inform them about an “antisemitic incident” that he said occurred last week.
“A teacher likened the forced implementation of the Yellow Star of David (an identifying badge to mark Jews) during the Holocaust to current COVID-19 vaccine mandates,” he wrote.
“The teacher has been removed from the classroom and is now on home assignment pending an investigation.”
In much of Nazi-occupied Europe, Jewish people were ordered to wear yellow cloth badges in the shape of the Star of David.
The star was intended to humiliate and isolate Jews and make it easier to identify them for deportation to concentration camps where they were systematically murdered.
Parravano said in his letter to parents that the teacher’s comments were “upsetting and unacceptable,” and that it “is not reflective of who we are and what we stand for as a school and a community.”
The letter says the school has arranged for Michelle Glied-Goldstein, an educator with the organization Carrying Holocaust Testimony from Generation to Generation, to speak to students.
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