Texans unclear on the concept

'Jews' spat on in Holocaust role play

• Role play designed to teach students about the Holocaust
• Students take exercise too far, spitting on "Jews"

A SCHOOL role playing exercise on the Holocaust went horribly wrong when some students took the lesson too far and the "Germans" spat on and punched the "Jews".

The Academy school in Waxahachie, 50 kilometres south of Dallas, Texas, runs the role play every year to teach year nine students about intolerance and discrimination.

During the role play students tagged as Jews were forced to stand against the wall as the "Germans" passed by the hallway, AP reported. The Jewish students had to pick up everyone's garbage at lunchtime and were the last to eat.

But students said the exercise got out of hand when the "German" students spat on and hit the "Jewish" students.

"They would spit on them. They would push them down the stairs. They would be really rude," student Tiffany Zimmerman told AP. "I think it was too rough and over the edge."

Principal John Aune told a Dallas-Fort Worth television station the point of the lesson was "learning about the problems of intolerance and the problems of discrimination and helping kids understand what some people went through to change the world."

Mr Aune said the school had run the Holocaust exercise for five years and had never received any reports of violence.

"I think that some of the kids were kind of harsh, but it taught us a little bit about how it was back then," student Trevor Smith said.