In a move that has infuriated Jewish educators, elected officials, and civil-rights advocates, a Brooklyn middle-school principal rejected a parent’s request to bring a Holocaust survivor to speak to students, because he is supportive of Israel.

Principal Arin Rusch of MS 447 in Boerum Hill told the parent that Holocaust survivor Sami Steigmann, 85, was not “right for our public school setting,” claiming his “messages around Israel and Palestine” made him inappropriate for the classroom.

Rusch offered to find “other speakers” on the Holocaust — so long as they did not hold views she deemed objectionable.

The problem? Steigmann’s website contains no commentary on the Israel-Hamas war. His biography and public lectures focus on surviving Nazi medical experiments, his lifelong injuries, and urging students to “be an upstander.” In occasional talks, he expresses pride in being Jewish and affirms Israel’s right to defend itself — positions that, until recently, would hardly disqualify a Holocaust survivor from speaking in a New York City public school.

For Jewish leaders, Rusch’s justification was the smoking gun confirming what they’ve long warned: that antisemitism in the city’s education system is no longer limited to student behavior — it’s now being enforced from the top down.

“This begs the question: Are we now censoring Holocaust survivors for their views on Israel?” wrote Moshe Spern, president of the United Jewish Teachers, in a blistering email to district officials. He called the principal’s decision “appalling,” “discriminatory,” and a slap in the face to a dwindling generation of survivors.

“There are only so many survivors left who can still speak,” he wrote. “This is not meeting the moment.”

Steigmann, born in 1939 in what is now Ukraine, survived three years in the Mogilev-Podolsky labor camp, where he was subjected to Nazi medical experiments. His talks — which have earned him honors from the Museum of Tolerance and the New York State Assembly — focus on resilience, moral courage, and the dangers of hatred.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)