Students Get Flyers on Holocaust ‘Hoax’ : Stuffed in lockers at 14 Schools by White Supremacy Group

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

The leaflets, which previously were distributed at schools in Palm Springs, Oroville, and elsewhere in the state, call on white students to work for the White Student Union, giving a Fallbrook post office box number used by Tom Metzger, the former state leader of the Ku Klux Klan who lost a bid for a San Diego area congressional seat in 1980.

“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 on honor of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the slain civil rights leader. Tyra speculated that someone climbed overt the seven-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 sixth and seventh grade. “For some it was their first brush with prejudice.”

Several parents and students from Nobel Junior High in Northridge and Parkman complained to the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith about the leaflets. Using a question-and-answer format, the flyers claim that no proof exists that the HOlocaust, in which 6 million European Jews perished during World War II, ever occurred.

In addition, the leaflets attack affirmative-action programs, minority groups and cultural studies in schools.

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

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

According to Metzger, the White Student Union was started about four years ago by Greg 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 its 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.

The union is controlled and operated by young people, ages 14 to 19 concerned with “the survival of white working-class families,” Metzger said. The group also opposes U.S. military intervention in Central America, the draft and the threat of nuclear war in the northern hemisphere, which Metzger called the homeland of two-thirds of the white race.

“I encourage and support the group 100%,” Metzger said, who runs a “white workers organization,” the White American Political Assn., which he estimates has 3,300 to4,000 members statewide. The union is controlled and operated by children ages 14 to 19, who are concerned with “the survival of white working-class families,” Metzger said. The group also opposes U.S. military intervention in Central America, the draft, and the threat of nuclear war in the Northern Hemisphere, which Metzger called the homeland of two-thirds of the white race.

“I encourage and support the group 100%,” said Metzger, who runs what he called a “white workers organization,” the White American Political Assn., which he estimates has 3,000 to 4,000 members statewide.