Posh Virginia private school that allegedly praised Hitler expelled three Jewish students who faced antisemitic bullying: complaint

A Northern Virginia private school celebrated as one of the best in the country allegedly expelled three Jewish siblings who endured relentless antisemitic harassment in the wake of the Oct.7, 2023 terror attack on Israel — all while their community celebrated Hitler as a “strong historical leader.”The Brandeis Center filed the complaint on behalf of the children’s parents, Brian Vazquez and Ashok Roy, against the Nysmith School for the Gifted, a K-8 academy located just an hour outside of Washington, DC, and its headmaster, Kenneth Nysmith.The complaint asserts that the couple’s 11-year-old daughter faced a “campaign of ostracizing” led by a handful of “popular students” on the sole basis that she is Jewish during the 2024-2025 school year.The students, in an apparent gross misunderstanding of the conflict, cruelly taunted the girl for the death of her uncle, telling her they were glad he “died in the October 7th attack,” according to the complaint.Her uncle died years earlier with no relation to the terror attack.Some students mocked her for being “Israeli” and dubbed Jews as “baby killers,” unabashedly saying that “they deserve to die because of what is happening in Gaza,” the complaint stated.Others doubled down and insisted that “everyone at the school is against Jews and Israel, which is why they hate you,” according to the complaint.

One middle school social studies project tasked the students to sketch a child-sized drawing including “six traits of a leader” following their studies of Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” according to an email from the Nysmith School.The Frankenstein amalgam included weaponry associated with rulers from Machiavelli’s time and a tie typically worn by modern-day businessmen or politicians.The drawing’s face, though, depicted a man’s face with Adolf Hitler’s unmistakable toothbrush mustache and slicked-back hair.Vazquez and Roy reported the repeated incidents to Nysmith, w...