Ohio Rep Vastly Underestimates Holocaust Deaths, Says Schools Should Teach German Perspective

Six million Jews, along with millions more Romani people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and people with disabilities were killed in the Holocaust.

A bill that restricts the way race can be taught in schools is being called a “draconian Holocaust censorship bill” by a Jewish lawmaker after comments from the bill’s co-sponsor, among other things, minimized the number of Jews who were killed in the Holocaust.

The bill was co-sponsored by State Representative Sarah Fowler Arthur, whose comments about the Holocaust have brought negative attention to her and the bill. She was attempting to explain to a local news station why she believes that “divisive concepts” should be taught from multiple perspectives.

“Maybe you’re going to listen to the perspective of someone from Poland when they were undergoing similar displacement, or when they were being incorporated into the war and to some of these camps,” Fowler Arthur told News 5 Cleveland. “And maybe you’ll listen to it from the perspective of a German soldier.”

Fowler Arthur would continue to put her foot in her mouth when she vastly underestimated the number of Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. “What we do not want is for someone to come in and say, ‘Well, obviously the German government was right in saying that the Aryan race is superior to all other races, and therefore that they were acting rightly when they murdered hundreds of thousands of people for having a different color of skin.’”

Over 6 million Jews are estimated to have died as a result of the Holocaust.

Her comments drew quick condemnation from Jewish leaders in the state, including Representative Casey Weinstein, one of two Jewish representatives in Ohio’s state legislature, who reportedly said she would like to accompany Fowler Arthur to the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage.

James Pasch, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s regional branch, told Cleveland 5 that Fowler Arthur showed “no baseline of even education there that 6 million Jews were systematically murdered, and millions of others.”

She even received criticism from her own party, with Ohio House Republican Speaker Bob Cupp calling the remarks “inappropriate” and “uninformed.”

Fowler Arthur is not backing down, however, sarcastically apologizing for views that she says she does not hold.

“I want to apologize for the unconscionable position that has been wrongfully attributed to me,” she said in a written statement. “Those views are not who I am or what I believe.”

She did not say how she was mischaracterized or what her actual views on the Holocaust are.

Her bill is the latest attempt by legislators in Republican-held states to ban “critical race theory” from being taught in schools.