Teacher Apologizes For Holocaust ‘Lesson’

An East Junior High School eighth-grade math teacher has apologized after giving students an assignment requiring them to calculate the volume of gas needed to fill a Nazi extermination chamber.

Jim McGuire, 37, a first-year teacher, also asked students as part of a study of the Holocaust to calculate the surface area of a mass grave where bodies were dumped following their extermination.

District administrators said the assignment was inappropriate.

“There was no ill intent,” said Ed Davis, district superintendent, “but a dumb lesson was given.”

Antonia Bicandi, East’s principal, wrote a letter of apology to Dan Fink, the rabbi at Congregation Ahavath-Beth Israel.

She called the math problem an “egregious error.”

Only one parent complained to East Junior High, Bicandi said.

The assignment was given to students on May 1 as part of an interdisciplinary study on the Holocaust, which includes reading “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

Boise School District officials are continuing an investigation into the incident, but do not expect to take disciplinary action against McGuire.

McGuire apologized to all of his math students following the assignment.

“I didn’t intend to hurt anybody, and I didn’t intend to trivialize it,” he said Thursday.