Change in Holocaust Program Sparks Dispute

Students are about to begin a program on the Holocaust which has left the school district at the center of a bitter controversy.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is running the program, designed to teach students about the systematic killing of more than 6 million European Jews and millions of others by the Nazis before and during World War II.

The center was called in by the school board to replace the Burbank Human Relations Council, a local activist group, which had organized the program for 15 years.

The council promptly filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice, and investigators completed interviews this week. While Burbank Unified school officials are confident they will be exonerated, a decision won’t be announced for a month.

The council accused the school board of ending its stewardship of the long-running “Days of Remembrance” program in retaliation for the council’s recent support of former Burbank High School Principal Keiko Hentell, who filed a civil rights lawsuit against the district after she was demoted in 1994.

But district officials maintain they changed the program’s organizer because the Wiesenthal Center offered a broader curriculum, and they accuse the human relations council of harassing the school district.

“We never had any problem with the Burbank Human Relations Council until we demoted Keiko Hentell, but from that moment forward it’s been sheer grief,” said board member Denise Lioy Wilcox.

“This is just one in a series of complaints they’ve raised. There are members of that group that live to harass the Burbank school district,” she said.

The Holocaust program has been a fixture in middle and high schools, with survivors of Nazi concentration camps and American soldiers who liberated them giving students firsthand accounts of the horrors of Nazi actions in World War II.

This year, 11 speakers are visiting the Burbank schools as part of the program, which begins April 8. The current program costs the school district nothing, and all speakers are volunteers, just as in the previous program, district officials said.

They say the program has not changed much, with the only difference being that speakers are now scheduled by a district staff member. The program also is augmented by presentations, films and literature from the Wiesenthal Center, plus student trips to the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

Members of the human relations council point to an October 1995 letter written to the school board by its attorney, Richard Currier, advising the board to cut off relations with the council because of its “hostile and litigious approach” to the district, citing the Hentell lawsuit and several other complaints raised by the council.

The board decided in January to hire the Wiesenthal Center to produce the Holocaust program.

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In its Feb. 26 complaint to the Department of Education, the council cited Currier’s letter as proof that the district acted in retaliation, a violation of federal law.

“It’s a very damaging letter,” said Lila Ramirez, president of the council.

Roger Murphy, a spokesman for the education department’s Office for Civil Rights in Washington, said the results of the federal investigation are not expected to be released for about one month.

“If we find the school system is not in compliance with federal civil rights statutes, and there is refusal to comply, there is a possibility they could lose all or part of their federal funding,” Murphy said.

The district receives about $2.4 million in federal funds earmarked for special education and other projects each year, said Supt. David Aponik.

But Ramirez said the human relations council’s goal is not to penalize the district financially. “What we want is our reputation restored,” Ramirez said. “They have totally discredited and defamed us through this process. They’re retaliating against us for filing lots of complaints against them, but we are advocates. We monitor public policy issues, and apparently they do not understand that.”

But board member Elena Hubbell said she is confident that the allegations will be dismissed.

“We’ve absolutely done nothing wrong; this is just a continuing harassment by a very few,” Hubbell said. “We’re always looking for new ways of doing things, and to be faulted for looking at a new way of doing this program is totally off the wall.”

Officials with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles could not be reached for comment.