THE CANDIDATE WHO DIDN’T KNOW WHAT AUSCHWITZ WAS: “Alex Johnstone, an education official who is running for Canada’s parliament, made a penis joke about Auschwitz and then apologized — saying she wasn’t aware it was a concentration camp:”
Alex Johnstone, who is running for a parliamentary seat in Canada [as a member of the socialist New Democratic Party], has drawn heat for not knowing about the past this week. Specifically, not knowing about very noteworthy facts about the Holocaust. The candidate, who is also a vice chairwoman of a school board in Hamilton, Ontario, made a phallic joke about a picture from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
“Ahh, the infamous Pollish, phallic hydro posts….of course you took pictures of this!” she wrote on a friend’s Facebook wall in 2008 beneath a picture of a barbed-wire gate at the concentration camp. “It expresses the how the curve is normal, natural and healthy right!”
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Adding insult to injury [in her botched joke apology], Johnstone stated that she didn’t know what Auschwitz even was.
“Well, I didn’t know what Auschwitz was, or I didn’t up until today,” she said in an interview Tuesday night. Johnstone, who appears to be in her thirties, said she had “heard about concentration camps.”
The Times of Israel adds:
Johnstone is vice chair of the local school board and regional vice chair on the Ontario Public School Board Association. She has served as a school trustee since 2010.
“While never intending any malice, this comment was clearly inappropriate,” she posted on her Facebook page Wednesday. “I would like to offer my unreserved apology for this comment.”
The Huffington Post Canada found Johnstone participated in school board meetings where prizes were awarded to teachers for “excellence in Holocaust education.”
Shades of this 2013 video in which Philadelphia-area college freshmen demonstrated their cluelessness about the topic; as I wrote when I linked to it back then, “Oh, That Present-Tense Culture:”
If politics don’t work out for Johnstone, she’ll have a great career ahead of her in television journalism.
(H/T: SDA)