Mountain Brook, AL – Ephraim Tytell, a Jewish high school student said he couldn’t believe what was going on when a history teacher in a wealthy Alabama school system had classmates stand and give a stiff-armed Nazi salute during a lesson on the way symbols change.
Once he shared a video and photos of the incident on social media, Ephraim Tytell said, he received a reprimand from school administrators in Mountain Brook, a suburb of Birmingham.
“They proceeded to tell me that I’m making Mountain Brook look bad for uploading the video and sharing it and asked me to apologize to my teacher, which I refused to,” he told WIAT-TV. “The day after, he made our class, and our class only, put up our phones and he moved me from sitting in the back of the class to right next to him.”
Ephraim explained he then posted a video and picture of the incident to social media, speaking out against what happened. The next day, he said school administrators reprimanded him.
“They proceeded to tell me that I’m making Mountain Brook look bad for uploading the video and sharing it and asked me to apologize to my teacher, which I refused to,” he said. “The day after he made our class, and our class only, put up our phones and he moved me from sitting in the back of the class to right next to him.”
Ephraim said at this time, the school has not issued any sort of apology to him for the incident.
Watchdog organization StopAntisemitism.org responded to the incident, telling CBS 42 in a statement, “Mountain Brook administration’s behavior threatening to punish the Jewish pupil for his principled and courageous stance against performing a Nazi salute in class and dismissing the reasonable concerns of Jewish parents can only be understood as unconscionable acts of intentional antisemitism.”
