High
school student wants alternative views of
Holocaust taught By KRIS B.
MAMULA
Associated
Press Writer PITTSBURGH (AP) -
High
school class president Robbie
Joswiak wants revisionist views of the
Holocaust taught in his Beaver County
school district and that, said one
teacher, is proof enough that students are
not receiving enough information about
Nazi Germany. In a recent e-mail
message to teacher Stephanie
Mazzei, the high school senior argued
that the number of European Jews killed in
Nazi Germany may have been 1.1 million --
not the six million deaths that are
usually cited. Mazzei, who teaches
gifted students and lectures on the
Holocaust, said Joswiak's views are proof
that the Riverside Beaver County School
District, with 2,067 students, needs to
expand its Nazi-era classes. "He
told me what I was teaching was, in
effect, folklore," said Mazzei, who has
been a teacher in the district for 30
years. "That's what alarmed me." Mazzei said Joswiak
was familiar with her teachings, but had
never attended one of her seminars, which
supplement the district's World War II
studies. Joswiak told Mazzei that he'd
read 13 books about the Holocaust, three
of which challenged conventional
information about the Nazi death
camps. Joswiak cited works
by British historian David Irving
as a reason why other views of the
Holocaust should be taught. Irving, 62,
disputes the number and manner of Jewish
deaths in concentration camps. But Nazi-era expert
Simon Reich dismissed Irving's
arguments. "There is
essentially no historical data in support
of his claims," Reich, a University of
Pittsburgh public policy professor, said
Monday. "He perverts the notion that
history provides you with a set of
objective facts." Citing Joswiak's
e-mail message, Mazzei has urged the
Riverside School Board to expand its
teaching about the Holocaust, which
currently does not reach every student.
Joswiak, who has studied the Nazi era in
Germany and Israel, offered to conduct
more seminars, she said. "The district
supports what she is teaching," said
Superintendent Mark King. "As far
as we're concerned, the matter is
closed." Joswiak's father,
Robert H. Joswiak, said his son
would not be available to comment. But he
said he supported his son's
efforts. "Obviously there are
forces at work today that are deliberately
excluding this knowledge," Joswiak said.
"What kind of education is this when it's
one-sided?" The elder Joswiak
said Irving's beliefs should be presented
with conventional Holocaust teachings.
Mazzei said those beliefs demonstrate the
importance of teaching what happened in
Nazi Germany. "This story needs to be
told," said Mazzei, "exactly what happened
and why." | 
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