School recalls yearbooks after teacher quotes Hitler as his 'favorite person in history'

A New York school district will hand out “improved” versions of the yearbook because a teacher was quoted naming Adolf Hitler as his “favorite person in history.”

On a yearbook page with a blurb called, “Meet the new guy on the block,” Jeff Acor, a new history teacher at Whitesville Central School praised the German dictator responsible for the Holocaust that executed six million Jewish people in WW2.

According to WIVB, when asked to name his favorite person in history, Acor said, “Adolf Hitler, who did many great things for Germany, and their youth, before the infamous Holocaust. Adolph was ousted and faced many hardships early in life, which a lot of people can relate to. Adolf is arguably the greatest public speaker in the history of the world. Adolf made many great strides to make Germany a world super power.”

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Jeff Acor, a history teacher at Whitesville Central School, is quoted as praising Adolf Hitler in the school yearbook. (Screenshot: WIVB)

Laurie Sanders, the superintendent of the Whitesville Central School District, told WIVB that Acor’s message was lost. “I don’t believe he was joking. He was really looking it at through the lens of history and not, he wasn’t applauding anything he did,” she said. “It’s questions that were asked of him and written down and he never got to see the entire writing.”

There were other “errors” too, Sanders explained. “When we read it, we felt that anything that promoted, or maybe perceived to imply hate, regardless of the intent, does not belong in the yearbook or at our school.”

In a school-wide letter, Sanders wrote that Acor’s statement was “incomplete” and “mistakenly taken out of context.” The yearbook committee will publish a “more accurate and complete quote form the teacher.”

Sanders told the Olean Times Herald that after a district investigation, “no action has been taken.”