The Cats
November 8th, 2006, 08:41 PM
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/sports/15956752.htm
Repulsive act should end season for school
by SCOTT FOWLER
Forestview High is scheduled to host a boys' soccer playoff game tonight in Gastonia.
The game absolutely should not be played. Forestview should forfeit the game and end its season.
Why? Because Saturday, before Forestview's last home playoff game against Charlotte Catholic, a segment of a Nazi-era speech given by one of Adolf Hitler's top lieutenants was played over the Forestview public address system. It was a misguided motivational attempt.
What these kids at Forestview need -- besides some better adult leadership -- is a good history lesson.
You don't put Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, on the P.A. That's absurd and repulsive.
Instead of playing another soccer game, I'd suggest using the time for a group viewing of "Schindler's List" by Forestview's players, coaches and principal. Or reading aloud from Elie Wiesel's book "Night." Or inviting a Holocaust survivor to speak at the school.
Forestview Principal Robert Carpenter confirmed Monday that a CD containing part of a Nazi-era speech was played over the P.A. system before Saturday's soccer game, which Forestview won.
Carpenter apologized in a faxed letter to Charlotte Catholic. At the time, the principal mistakenly believed the speech in question had been made by Hitler, not Goebbels. Part of Carpenter's letter of apology read:
"Sometime back Coach (David) Shearer and the team started using `On to victory' as a slogan. We have a German exchange student on our team. He taught our students to say it in German. Some of our more zealous students sought to capture this slogan in German and to play it on the PA."
Later in the letter, Carpenter said: "Student intent was to only play the `On to victory' clip. Unfortunately at one time a good bit of the speech was played on the PA during the pre-game."
I don't care if it was a little bit or a lot of a Nazi speech. You don't sample a Nazi minister of propaganda like he was a rap artist. Goebbels, like Hitler, was a murderer on a monstrous scale. He eventually committed suicide along with his wife, although they first killed their six children with poison.
I'm no Holocaust expert. But I've visited concentration camps in Germany and Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam. I know enough -- we all should know enough -- to understand that the Nazi name should never be broached to get somebody pumped up for a sporting event.
Wasn't the theme from "Rocky" good enough for Forestview? If history was the students' passion, how about a taped speech from John F. Kennedy or Winston Churchill?
And where were school officials when Goebbels' voice was booming out in German over the loudspeaker? To borrow an NCAA phrase, this was a lack of institutional control.
Forestview's administration is doing the school no favors by not answering questions publicly about the incident. Neither principal Carpenter nor coach Shearer returned my calls Tuesday. An Observer reporter who went to the team's Tuesday practice was told no one from Forestview would talk to him.
Forestview should shut its soccer season down.
Repulsive act should end season for school
by SCOTT FOWLER
Forestview High is scheduled to host a boys' soccer playoff game tonight in Gastonia.
The game absolutely should not be played. Forestview should forfeit the game and end its season.
Why? Because Saturday, before Forestview's last home playoff game against Charlotte Catholic, a segment of a Nazi-era speech given by one of Adolf Hitler's top lieutenants was played over the Forestview public address system. It was a misguided motivational attempt.
What these kids at Forestview need -- besides some better adult leadership -- is a good history lesson.
You don't put Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, on the P.A. That's absurd and repulsive.
Instead of playing another soccer game, I'd suggest using the time for a group viewing of "Schindler's List" by Forestview's players, coaches and principal. Or reading aloud from Elie Wiesel's book "Night." Or inviting a Holocaust survivor to speak at the school.
Forestview Principal Robert Carpenter confirmed Monday that a CD containing part of a Nazi-era speech was played over the P.A. system before Saturday's soccer game, which Forestview won.
Carpenter apologized in a faxed letter to Charlotte Catholic. At the time, the principal mistakenly believed the speech in question had been made by Hitler, not Goebbels. Part of Carpenter's letter of apology read:
"Sometime back Coach (David) Shearer and the team started using `On to victory' as a slogan. We have a German exchange student on our team. He taught our students to say it in German. Some of our more zealous students sought to capture this slogan in German and to play it on the PA."
Later in the letter, Carpenter said: "Student intent was to only play the `On to victory' clip. Unfortunately at one time a good bit of the speech was played on the PA during the pre-game."
I don't care if it was a little bit or a lot of a Nazi speech. You don't sample a Nazi minister of propaganda like he was a rap artist. Goebbels, like Hitler, was a murderer on a monstrous scale. He eventually committed suicide along with his wife, although they first killed their six children with poison.
I'm no Holocaust expert. But I've visited concentration camps in Germany and Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam. I know enough -- we all should know enough -- to understand that the Nazi name should never be broached to get somebody pumped up for a sporting event.
Wasn't the theme from "Rocky" good enough for Forestview? If history was the students' passion, how about a taped speech from John F. Kennedy or Winston Churchill?
And where were school officials when Goebbels' voice was booming out in German over the loudspeaker? To borrow an NCAA phrase, this was a lack of institutional control.
Forestview's administration is doing the school no favors by not answering questions publicly about the incident. Neither principal Carpenter nor coach Shearer returned my calls Tuesday. An Observer reporter who went to the team's Tuesday practice was told no one from Forestview would talk to him.
Forestview should shut its soccer season down.