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In a lawsuit filed against the Woodcliff Lake School District, Robert Welsh of Park Ridge says he was made a “scapegoat” amid complaints from parents because he’s a “socially conservative Christian in a community with a large Jewish population.”
Welsh, 53, wrote a letter to the parents explaining why he considered the lesson necessary and apologizing “for any misconceptions or misperceptions that this lesson may have caused,” the suit filed in Superior Court in Hackensack says.
The assignments involving Hitler and Nazism were part of a 7th-grade lesson on “totalitarian governments in general, including how such movements gain power,” it says.
The instruction was intended to show various aspects of Nazism, including how Hitler and his followers appropriated what had been a Hindu symbol for prosperity and good fortune, Welsh contends.
The schools chief said the letter wasn’t “good enough,” however, and administrators never shared it, his lawsuit alleges.
“The board well knows that the plaintiff has now been falsely branded in the community as some sort of pro-Hitler teacher, which it knows will effectively end his teaching career,” it says.
Woodcliff Lake school officials couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Welsh – a Haverstraw, NY, native married to a special education teacher -- has taught in the district for more than 22 years, according to his online resume.
He's conducted the same class for 10 years without objection, and the lesson plan had been approved and “favorably observed by the former school principal."
Welsh was nonetheless suspended with pay on Feb. 7, 2022, and later accused of violating state bullying, intimidation and harassment laws, it says.
The suit contends that district officials had it in for Welsh beginning last year, when he tried to launch a Christian club for students and later objected to state-mandated education on sex and LGBTQ issues.
The district collected “unrecorded, hearsay” complaints from 18 students whose identities weren’t disclosed, the suit alleges.
Welsh’s lessons included a project for which students were instructed to draw a political cartoon or propaganda-type poster from the viewpoint of a government official, the United States or other neutral counties as the world headed toward World War II, the complaint says.
The suit says Welsh was falsely accused of encouraging students to use swastikas.
In fact, it says, Welsh “explicitly instructed the students never to draw the swastika outside of the classroom setting of the poster project,” since the swastika is a hate symbol.
If used, it had to be in the then-German flag, the suit says Welsh told them. Or they could swap in the country’s current flag, it says.
The lawsuit also says that Welsh played a video of a Hitler speech “to demonstrate how angry of a speaker” he was.
Welsh requested and was granted an appeal hearing in which he and his attorney were permitted to make brief statements but couldn’t question any of the witnesses, the suit alleges.
District officials upheld the suspension, continuing with pay, it says, continuing a series of “discriminatory acts” against him on the basis of his religion and creed. In doing so, they violated state law, the lawsuit says.
“The fact that his indefinite suspension is currently with pay is of little consolation to the plaintiff, where his reputation as a teacher has been destroyed,” the suit says.
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