Georgia school under fire for unveiling ‘sick’ new logo that resembles Nazi symbol

‘Pretending that antisemitism doesn’t exist won’t make it go away’

A school district in Georgia had to pause the rollout of a new logo after it triggered outrage among parents for apparent similarities to a Nazi symbol.

The Cobb County School District issued a clarification on Tuesday and said that it has halted the distribution of the logo for East Side Elementary School in Marietta.

The new logo depicted an eagle, which is the school’s mascot, over the school’s initials ES.

Parents pointed out that the logo bore resemblance to the Nazi eagle. Developed originally by the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1920, the logo showed an eagle holding a swastika in its talons and eventually became a symbol for white supremacists.

The school district, which is the second-largest in Georgia, said they were “immediately reviewing needed changes” in the school logo.

“We understand and strongly agree that similarities to Nazi symbolism are unacceptable, although this design was based on the US Army colonel’s eagle wings, stakeholder input has been and continues to be important to our schools,” the statement said.

Parents were issued notification of the new logo on Monday, saying it was chosen to “represent the eagle soaring into excellence and to honour the history of our great school”.

Several people took objection to the logo by the East Side Elementary School, which is located across the street from the Etz Chaim Synagogue.

“I don’t want to see my kids wearing that on their shirt,” Mike Albuquerque, the father of two students who will attend the school next year, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“Really it’s a big oversight of the county and everyone involved in the process who reviewed that, to not call out the fact that this looks like Nazi iconography. Or maybe, who knows, somebody did call it out and it wasn’t heard.”

Rbbi Amanda Flaks told WSB-TV she had to look twice at the design and it made her uncomfortable.

“I thought, ‘That looks off. That makes me uncomfortable,’ and I came back to it a few times and I felt more and more uncomfortable and sick each time,” Ms Flaks said, adding that she contacted the school to raise her objections.

She said she was hurt to see it because “my children are great grandchildren of someone who fled the Nazi regime in Germany and survived the Holocaust”.

This is not the first time the school district has got embroiled in an antisemitism controversy.

Last year, anti-Semitic graffiti was found daubed on a boys’ bathroom wall during the most important holiday period of the Jewish faith at the Alan C Pope High School in Marietta. Two swastikas and “hail [sic] Hitler” graffiti were found on the wall, with the administration ordering an investigation.

Several Cobb middle school students were disciplined earlier this year for sharing antisemitic imagery on social media.

Noting the rise in such incidents, Dov Wilker, director of the American Jewish Committee Atlanta region, said: “Pretending that antisemitism doesn’t exist won’t make it go away. The children who attend Cobb County schools — and their families — deserve better.”