A textbook being used at a fitness class at the University of North Carolina reads that those killed in the Holocaust “did not tap into the strength that comes from their intrinsic worth succumbed to the brutality to which they were subjected.”
“21st Century Wellness” is one of the Lifetime Fitness classes students are required to take to graduate from UNC.
The book is now under review for the upcoming semester, a UNC spokesman told CNN.
Ron Hager, a co-author of the textbook and a Brigham Young University professor, said that the Holocaust reference is to suggest that “a sense of inherent self-worth can be a source of strength or motivation that can help those struggling.”
Ryan Holmes, who took the one-credit course last fall, is one of the students who said using the book is an exercise in poor judgment.
“Some of the stuff they said seemed almost like pseudoscience, and it kind of blurred the lines between what I recognized to be real factual information and things that may or may not be true,” Holmes told CNN. “It put a lot of emphasis on the connection between mental and physical health, more than normal.”
“I thought that it was an oversimplification that didn’t account for situational factors,” he added.
Outside groups, like the Endowment for Middle East Truth and the Israel education organization StandWithUs, condemned the book
“The textbook used at UNC is a complete disgrace; the horrific, bigoted, and vile claim that Holocaust victims did not ‘tap into the[ir] strength’ is a denial of the horrors of the genocidal campaign launched against the Jewish people,” Jennifer Dekel, EMET’s director of research and communications, told Red Alert Politics.
“The book is not only an insult to the memory of the innocent Jewish souls that perished during the Holocaust, but it is serving to brainwash our youth into believing a dangerous fallacy that glosses over the horrors of the Holocaust, and invokes the twisted ideas of Holocaust deniers,” Dekel added. “UNC should immediately eliminate the textbook from its curriculum, and issue an apology to its Jewish students for not having done so sooner.”
“To suggest that people who died in the concentration camps — or any genocide — because they did not tap into their ‘intrinsic worth’ is insulting to the victims and indicates an appalling lack of knowledge and sensitivity,” StandWithUs co-founder Roz Rothstein told Red Alert Politics.
“Have them explain how ‘intrinsic worth’ is supposed to keep someone alive who has been tortured, shot, gassed, or starved,” Rothstein, a daughter of Holocaust survivors, added. “We are grateful that students are not buying into this and that the administration plans to make changes in the textbook.”
According to Hillel International, there are currently 1,000 Jewish undergrads at UNC, which makes up 5 percent of UNC’s undergraduate population.
Also shocking, the textbook labels cancer as a “disease of choice.”
