There’s another Adolf Hitler-related controversy brewing in South Carolina …
A year ago (well, this news site actually broke the story in 2016) it was a dust-up over one of the infamous German warlord’s water colors – which was put on display at a government-run museum in Florence, S.C. This year’s scandal involves students at a Lowcountry government-run school who portrayed the murderous dictator as part of a “wax museum” presentation.
A living history lesson, in other words …
According to reporter Kelly Meyerhofer of The (Hilton Head, S.C.) Island Packet, two fifth-graders at Okatie Elementary School in Bluffton, S.C. posed as Hitler as part of this educational exercise. That might have been the last anyone heard of it, except images of the two children giving the Nazi salute were posted to the school’s Facebook page last week.
That prompted all hell to break loose.
On Monday, Okatie principal Jamie Pinckney issued an apology … sort of.
“It is not and was not our intent to sensationalize or glorify the acts of any of the dictators or public figures represented,” she wrote. “History is not always pretty and nice but we hope by teaching our students about the past it is not repeated.”
That’s actually pretty well-said on her part if you ask us …
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[/timed-content-server]The uproar caused over this wax museum strikes us as a bit hyperbolic.
No one is comparing anyone to Hitler (or for that matter Joseph Stalin), nor is anyone endorsing the fascist, anti-semitic ideology to which he subscribed – an ideology that plunged the world into its deadliest conflict ever nearly eighty years ago.
To be clear: It was probably unwise of the school’s principal to post these particular images, but we see nothing wrong with their inclusion in this academic exercise – which included students portraying a host of historical and contemporary political figures.
Seriously, people … let’s all try and get a grip here.
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