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Rusch said Steigmann’s pro-Israel advocacy made him unsuitable, writing that his presentation was “not right for our public school setting, given his messages around Israel and Palestine.”
By United with Israel Staff
A Brooklyn middle school principal refused a parent’s request to bring Holocaust survivor Sami Steigmann to speak to students about antisemitism, telling the parent that his pro-Israel views made him inappropriate for a public school setting, the New York Post reported Tuesday. The decision stemmed from a November 18 message in which Arin Rusch, principal of the MS 447 school, rejected the request.
“In looking at his website material, I also do not think that Sami’s presentation is right for our public school setting, given his messages around Israel and Palestine,” Rusch wrote. She told the parent she would “love to explore other speakers,” according to the Post, even as the school said it remained open to Holocaust education.
Steigmann, 84, has spent decades sharing his story of survival. Born in 1939 in Czernovitz, he was imprisoned as a toddler with his parents in the Mogilev-Podolsky labor camp in Transnistria, where he was subjected to Nazi medical experiments. He survived starvation and bitter winters only because a German woman secretly brought him milk despite great personal risk. After the war, he grew up in Transylvania, later immigrated to Israel, served in the Israeli Air Force, and eventually settled in New York City. He now speaks widely to schools and organizations about the Holocaust, antisemitism and resilience.
Steigmann says he will speak to almost any audience because educating others is his life purpose. “This is my mission. This is what I live for, and it keeps me going,” he says. The only people he refuses to engage, he notes, are Holocaust deniers “because such a person has a closed mind.”
Rusch’s rationale centered on Steigmann’s pro-Israel advocacy, which is woven into many of his talks. In a YouTube lecture, he told students, “What is happening in the Middle East, we will prevail. We will win. In every generation they tried to annihilate us. We prevailed.”
He also encourages young audiences to join StandWithUs, a nonpartisan Israel education group that counters misinformation and fights antisemitism. Steigmann has spoken bluntly about the atrocities of October 7, saying, “I was not shocked that Hamas wanted to murder. I was surprised by the capacity of their attack, the complete brutality of all that they did, and that they also recorded it.” He added that Israel had long endured thousands of rockets launched at its civilians: “No other country would accept such attacks.”
The principal’s decision immediately drew criticism. Moshe Spern, president of the United Jewish Teachers, wrote in a November 26 email to Brooklyn District 15 Superintendent Rafael Alvarez and aides to Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos that the rejection “begs the question of, ‘Are we now censoring Holocaust survivors for their views of Israel?’” Spern, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, called the decision “appalling,” “discriminatory” and “personally offensive,” noting, “There are only so many survivors out there who still speak.”
New York City Council member Inna Vernikov, quoted by the Post, condemned the school’s stance as “abhorrent” at a time when antisemitism among youth is rising. She warned that the school may be engaging in unlawful viewpoint discrimination. “To see public schools engaging in this conduct is unsurprising, and we will not sit idly by,” she said.
Steigmann, who has spent his life warning of where hatred can lead, said recent events have shaken him deeply. “I never thought I would see what I am seeing today,” he said of rising antisemitism, university leaders refusing to condemn calls for genocide, and violence at protests. “It is a crazy world.”
The controversy over MS 447 now raises a broader question: If a Holocaust survivor cannot speak about antisemitism because he supports Israel’s right to exist, what message does that send to students who are supposed to be learning from history?
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