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Ohio Middle School Restricts
Holocaust-Diary Anthology

A Canal Winchester (Ohio) Middle School materials review committee voted 4–2 May 7 to keep 4th-, 5th-, and 6th-graders from checking out Children in the Holocaust and World War II: Their Secret Diaries from the school library.

Calling it “a terrible mistake” that the wartime memoirs of 23 European children ages 10–18 had been placed in the collection, complainant Paula Ewart told the committee May 5 that the book’s frank discussion of sex, drugs, and suicide “undermined most of what we require our students to learn at school,” according to the May 6 Columbus Dispatch. Edited by psychotherapist Laurel Holliday, the anthology was deemed a Best Adult Book for Young Adults by School Library Journal in 1995.

Ironically, the district has $500 more to spend on Holocaust-related materials because of the controversy: Attorney Kenneth Besser, who was awarded the sum after suing to open the May 7 meeting to the public, donated the money to the schools, the May 8 Dispatch said.

Posted May 17, 1999.

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