Holocaust ‘Hoax’ Flyers Found Stuffed in School Lockers

Flyers that proclaim white supremacy and charge that the World War II Holocaust is a hoax were discovered Tuesday in student lockers at several junior and senior high schools in the Los Angeles and San Diego areas.

The leaflets, which previously were distributed at schools in Palm Springs and Oroville, call on white students to work for the White Student Union and give a Fallbrook post office box number used by Tom Metzger, the former state leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

“I didn’t know people would say things like that,” said Tony McRuffin, 13, a black student at Parkman Junior High in Woodland Hills. “A lot of us are upset about this kind of stuff.

Wayne Tyra, assistant principal at Parkman, estimated that at least half of the school’s 920 students found the leaflets stuffed in their lockers when they returned to school Tuesday after a day off in honor of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the slain civil rights leader. Tyra speculated that someone climbed over the 7-foot-high fence surrounding the school to get to the lockers, all of which are outside.

“At first, a lot of black and Jewish kids figured they were the only ones who got the flyers, and they were asking, ‘Why are we being singled out?”’ said Mickey Mandell, who teaches 6th and 7th grade. “For some it was their first brush with prejudice.”

San Diego County school officials and local civil rights organizations dismissed the act as a publicity stunt for the Ku Klux Klan, and Principal JoAnn Smith at Granite Hill High School in El Cajon said most of the students went about their day as if nothing happened.

However, several parents and students from Nobel Junior High in Northridge and Parkman Junior High in Woodland Hills complained to the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith about the leaflets.

Gregory Withrow, 23, national director of the White Student Union, said the organization was forced to distribute the literature in that manner because schools and libraries refuse to teach both sides of the Holocaust story.

The flyers give the phone numbers of recorded messages in seven areas around the state.

A woman’s voice on the tape calls on students and teachers to challenge the “grossly exaggerated” story of the Holocaust which, the message says, is used for “political and financial gain by Israel and her supporters.”

The leaflets also encourage white students to ask themselves what effect “unconstitutional affirmative-action programs” have had on their job prospects and “why political leaders bow and scrape to minority political groups . . . but never address the problems of White U.S. workers.”

According to Metzger, the White Student Union was started about four years ago by Withrow, a student at American River College in Sacramento. Although Metzger said he has no official connection with the White Student Union, he said he agrees with their philosophy and gives the group whatever financial support he can. His 17-year-old son, John, a student at Fallbrook High School, is an officer in the group, he said.

“I encourage and support the group 100%,” Metzger said.