Jewish groups have condemned a Boston school principal for an email he sent apologizing to Arab, Muslim, Palestinian, and Lebanese students who were offended by a mandatory Holocaust lesson.
In the email, William Diamond Middle School Principal Johnny Cole said he was “sorry” for the impact the Holocaust lesson had on some students.
“Some of you felt unseen. Some of you felt like your own history, your identity, or your community was left out or erased. Some of you left that session feeling less safe, not more,” Cole wrote.
While he acknowledged that hard conversations and topics are part of the school’s framework, he apologized for “missing the mark” with this class.
“Every one of you deserves to walk into this school and feel that who you are matters – Arab students, Jewish students, Lebanese students, Muslim students, Palestinian students.”
He said the teachers are working with families in the community to “build something better” that “includes all of our histories.”
The Holocaust requires an apology?
StopAntisemitism condemned the email, saying, “Since when is teaching historical fact something that requires an apology? And why is a school principal validating outrage over Holocaust education instead of defending it?”
This is not the first time the school and its principal have made headlines over the last week.
Just days ago, one school pupil, Teaghan Murtagh, wrote a letter to The Lexington Observer describing how Cole had ordered her not to remove a T-shirt with the words “Save the bees. Plant more trees. Clean the seas. Punch Nazis.”
Murtagh had been wearing this T-shirt to school regularly for nearly two years. Her great-grandmother was a Holocaust survivor, having spent the war in a concentration camp at the same age Murtagh is now.
“Dr. Cole told me not to wear the shirt to school again because he ‘had received some student complaints’ from students who ‘felt threatened.’ I was floored. I wanted to ask how anyone (other than a Nazi or someone with a bee-related anaphylactic allergy) could feel threatened by the shirt. I had a feeling it didn’t have to do with the bees,” she wrote.
“When my grandmother was growing up, she knew when she needed to keep her mouth shut for survival. Over 6.5 million Jewish people were killed in the Holocaust. Against that horrific backdrop, it is a miracle that I exist.
“I know when I need to open my mouth and speak up. I do this through shirts, typically. My closet is full of snarky shirts, since it’s how I express myself and share my thoughts with the world. From reading books to fighting patriarchy, my closet covers it all.”
She noted that, in December 2025, students at the school drew neo-Nazi symbols on the bathroom walls and that the “only schoolwide response was a statement on the announcements telling us to be kind.”
Cole shared with parents and students on December 17 that the graffiti included an antisemitic neo-Nazi symbol and a racist anti-Black epithet.
“We live in a world that is incredibly scary right now, particularly for people who hold identities that are targeted by events like this or the events that are happening outside of Lexington. We want students to understand that they have contributed to that fear,” he said in a statement.
“We want them to do the opposite of this – we want them to build a culture of unity and togetherness in this space, and suspensions and traditional disciplinary methods don’t typically do that.”