JTA — Adolf Hitler cropped up in the student baby photos section of a New Jersey middle school yearbook, prompting condemnation from school officials and local Jewish leaders.

In a letter sent last Thursday to the school community, East Brook Middle School Principal Ryan Aupperlee said that the school in Paramus had launched an investigation into the incident in “coordination with law enforcement.”

“Adolf Hitler represents hatred, antisemitism, and the horrors of the Holocaust, including the murder of six million Jews,” Aupperlee wrote in the letter obtained by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “An image of him has no place in a yearbook created for our students. It does not reflect who we are or what East Brook stands for, and we condemn its inclusion without reservation.”

Sean Adams, the superintendent of Paramus Public Schools, told JTA in an emailed statement that the yearbooks were taken back from the students “the same day they were distributed, before the students left school for the day.”

“We are working with the yearbook company to develop a solution that will allow us to redistribute the yearbooks after removing the offensive content while still allowing students to retain the handwritten, personalized messages their classmates and teachers had already written in their yearbooks,” Adams said.

Adams said that an investigation into the incident was “ongoing,” and that “any details related to students must remain confidential.”

The incident comes amid a spate of allegations of antisemitism in New Jersey schools in recent years. In 2024, the US Department of Education opened an investigation into Teaneck Public Schools after parents alleged the system had fostered an antisemitic climate since the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre in Israel. The same year, teachers at Fort Lee High School presented a lesson that described the Hamas terror organization as a........

© The Times of Israel