Blond kids selected on Holocaust Day

A Haifa elementary school teacher has come under fire for bringing blond-haired students to the front of her third-grade class as part of a Holocaust Remembrance Day lesson on Monday.

The teacher’s exercise on how the Nazis selected Jews included the message that the light-haired children might have survived the Nazi genocide due to their appearance.

The teacher told her class that the blond children, many of whom had parents who immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union, could have survived the Holocaust because they could pass for Germans, as opposed to other children with darker complexions.

Parents of the children who objected to the lesson wrote a letter to the Ministry of Education complaining about the teacher.

The ministry said it viewed the incident as serious.

The teacher later apologized, and discussions were held in the classroom in order to ensure an environment of tolerance.