**UPDATE** Wiesenthal Center Demands Removal Of University Health Textbook That Claims Holocaust Victims Perished Because They Didn’t “Tap Into Their Inner Strength”

UPDATE Wiesenthal Center Demands Removal Of University Health Textbook That Claims Holocaust Victims Perished Because They Didn’t “Tap Into Their Inner Strength”

August 2, 2018

**UPDATE**

The Raleigh News & Observer reports that, following protests from the SWC and others, the University of North Carolina removes a section that “insults the memory of Holocaust victims" from controversial health textbook. "UNC did the right thing," says SWC's Rabbi Abraham Cooper.

https://www.newsobserver.com/ne…/local/article216230130.html

WIESENTHAL CENTER DEMANDS REMOVAL OF UNIVERSITY HEALTH TEXTBOOK THAT CLAIMS HOLOCAUST VICTIMS PERISHED BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T “TAP INTO THEIR INNER STRENGTH”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is demanding that an online health textbook used by the University of North Carolina (UNC) be removed because it “insults the memory of Holocaust victims.”

According to a CNN report, the book, 21st Century Wellness, which is used in an required “Lifetime Fitness” course at UNC, includes a section that states that Holocaust victims “…in the camps who did not tap into the strength that comes from their intrinsic worth succumbed to the brutality to which they were subjected.”

“Succumbed to brutality?” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean, Director of Global Social Action. “These innocent people were systematically starved, beaten, and worked to death by the Nazis. ‘Intrinsic worth’? Life as a Jew during the Nazi Holocaust was worth less than a bullet. The world didn’t give a damn!” he added.

Aaron Breitbart, the Senior Researcher at Wiesenthal Center, said that the low-calorie diet of tea, black bread, and a thin soup with potatoes and grain given at Auschwitz was insufficiently nutritious for forced laborers. They either died from starvation or in the gas chambers because they were deemed too weak to work.

For more information, please contact the Center's Communications Department, 310-553-9036. Join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent direct to your Twitter feed.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).