Teachers Who Allowed Boy’s Hitler Speech Are Criticized : History: Student wins second place in a contest after dressing up as the Nazi leader and trying to explain the dictator’s actions.

Westlake Elementary School parents and Jewish community leaders demanded a public apology Friday from school officials who allowed a student to dress up as Adolf Hitler and deliver a speech sympathetic to his Nazi dictatorship.

The reaction came after a fifth-grade student addressed an auditorium filled with students Monday, delivering a four-minute speech that portrayed Hitler as a youth who was mistreated by Jews and then grew up to become one of the world’s great military leaders.

The unidentified boy, who donned a khaki uniform, boots, a swastika armband and fake mustache, was awarded second place in a student oratory contest by a panel of teachers.

Rabbi Moshe Bryski of the Chabad of the Conejo said he was contacted by angry parents upset that some students came away believing that Hitler was a positive leader.

“The children came home and said, ‘Hitler wasn’t so bad,’ ” Bryski said. “This is why the David Dukes are out there who are able to rewrite history.”

Student Asher Goldstein, 10, said he was afraid to wear his Jewish Star of David to school after the speech. “He didn’t talk about the Holocaust,” Asher said. “He said a bunch of different things that weren’t nice to people. It just kind of makes you sick, someone dressing up as a Nazi.”

William Seaver, superintendent of the Conejo Valley Unified School District, declined to blame the teachers who allowed the speech to take place and gave it a second-place award.

Seaver refused to say whether the teachers were disciplined or if any action was planned.

But he acknowledged that the teacher who approved the speech used “questionable judgment. . . . I don’t think anyone could construe Hitler as a positive person.”

Seaver said the Hitler speech prompted him to revise the rules for oratorical contests and include a new requirement that speeches about historical figures focus on those who have made a positive contribution to society.

The school district will also require teachers and principals to review the content of speeches before they are delivered to make sure that the subject matter is appropriate for schoolchildren.

“I think an unfortunate incident occurred. I am sorry that it happened,” Seaver said. “I’m trying to ensure that the issue doesn’t arise again.”

But some parents complained that the superintendent’s action is too little too late.

A group of mothers who picked up their children from Westlake Elementary School on Friday said they remained upset that officials failed to respond immediately after the speech and that no one has apologized to them.

“This was offensive to people who are Jewish or non-Jewish,” said Marsha Zimmerman, whose daughter Candice is in the same fifth-grade class as the boy who delivered the speech.

“I don’t get why this is a big deal,” Candice said. “All he did was get dressed up as Hitler.”

But Rabbi Alan Greenbaum of Temple Adat Elohim in Thousand Oaks said that society should be clear on Hitler’s role in history. “Hitler should be seen as the epitome of evil,” he said.

“Some people you try to understand and see in all of their dimensions,” he said. “But here’s a man who said he would, and then did, carry out the malicious genocide of a people. That’s evil and there are no gray areas.”

The speech briefly mentioned that Hitler killed millions of Jews, but did not offer any details of the Holocaust or Nazi death camps during World War II, according to a typewritten copy provided to parents.

Principal Linda Spellman said that after parents complained, she met with students in an attempt to place Hitler in a broader historical context.

She said she also contacted the Simon Wiesenthal Center to arrange a visit from officials of the Los Angeles-based institute for Holocaust studies. A visit has not yet been scheduled.

“We’re sorry there has been so much hurt,” Spellman said. “It certainly was never intentional. It was a little fifth-grade boy who wrote a report himself, and none of us realized the impact it would have on some people. We’re trying to work on it now, to mend some feelings.”

But some parents say school authorities should never have permitted the speech in the first place.

According to the copy parents received, the speech attempted to depict the forces that shaped Hitler’s life.

“My mother died of cancer while being treated by a Jewish doctor,” it said. It went on to say that Hitler enrolled at an arts academy in Vienna, Austria. “The headmaster thought my drawings were TERRIBLE! . . . Later I learned that the headmaster was Jewish.”

In another paragraph of the speech, he boy read, “I would like to be remembered not as a dictator, but as a great military mind.”

Ed and Etta Goldstein, the parents of Asher, said they were incensed that the speech trivialized Hitler’s attempt at genocide and glorified the Nazi leader.

“I will not have my children grow up with fear that they are Jews,” Etta Goldstein said. She said she planned to bring up the issue at a Parent Faculty Assn. meeting Tuesday.

“Can you imagine if someone put on a Ku Klux Klan robe and went onstage?” Ed Goldstein said. “It’s the same thing. I’m sure people would be offended.”