The hateful procession was shocking even for Origins, a school rife with bias and bullying, insiders told The Post.
“I live in fear of going to work every day,” said global history teacher Danielle Kaminsky.
According to interviews with multiple staffers, and a Jewish student’s safety transfer request, recent hate incidents include:
- A student painted a mustache on his face to look like Hitler, and banged on classroom doors. When someone opened, he clicked his heels and raised his arm in the Nazi gesture, security footage shows.
- Three swastikas in one week were drawn on teachers’ walls and other objects, a manager found.
- A 10th-grader told Kaminsky, 33, who is Jewish, “I wish you were killed.”
- Another student called her “a dirty Jew” and said he wished Hitler could have “hit more Jews,” including her.
- Students pasted drawings of the Palestinian flag and notes saying “Free Palestine” on Kaminsky’s classroom door. One scribbled note that said simply, “Die.”
The teen tormentors have so far faced no serious discipline under interim acting principal Dara Kammerman, who has done little beyond contacting parents in an effort to practice “restorative justice,” staffers said.
“She is perpetuating an antisemitic environment and a school of hate,” said Michael Beaudry, campus manager of the Sheepshead Bay building that houses Origins and three other schools. “The students continue these behaviors because they know there won’t be any consequences.”
In response, the city Department of Education said it will launch a probe: “There is currently no evidence that these claims are true, but we are investigating the claims.”
In a disturbing instance in late January, a group of boys came into Kaminsky’s classroom at the end of the day, and cornered her, laughing, she said.
“Miss Kaminsky, do you love Hitler?” one asked.
“I was so taken aback,” she said. “I did not respond, and they all gave the heil Hitler sign.”
Frightened, Kaminsky quickly left her classroom.
One boy waved to his friends to chase her inside the building, a scene captured on security footage, Beaudry said.
Kaminsky immediately reported the harassment to the acting principal — who refused to suspend the boys because she found they did nothing wrong, records show.
“We can’t do anything because the students claimed they were trying to have an ‘academic conversation,’” staffers quoted her as explaining.
Antisemitism at Origins HS has festered for several years, Kaminsky and Beaudry said.
At Kaminsky’s request last March, Kammerman arranged for a group of students to visit the Museum of Jewish Heritage, which had a new program to educate students about antisemitism and the Holocaust.
The museum, in Battery Park City, first sent two female interns to Origins to prepare the teens for what they would see.
Several boys nearly brought the young women to tears with rude and appalling comments, according to emails with the museum and staff accounts.
One teen said he would have sex with a dead Jewish woman.
Another said he would “take money from the dead Jewish people’s corpses.”
Others made derisive remarks like “Who cares about the Jews?”
The museum canceled the visit.
When another group of Origins kids went later that year, some stuffed trash in the donation box.
The museum omitted a meeting with a Holocaust survivor because some kids were so disrespectful.
About 40% of Origins students are Muslim. DOE stats list 22% as Asian, 22% Black, 17% Hispanic and 32% white.
The school has many students in families from Middle Eastern nations such as Yemen, Egypt, and Palestine who identify as white, along with those from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in Central Asia.
Several Jewish students bullied because of their religion have fled Origins since last year. In that time, the school’s enrollment of 508 has plummeted to 445.
Currently, no more than a dozen Jewish kids attend Origins, staffers say.
In one case, a Jewish sophomore found three swastikas scribbled on his laptop charger when he returned from the restroom, he wrote in a safety transfer request obtained by The Post.
“I feel like in history class I’m always targeted and it’s hard for me to take,” the student wrote,
He also said he heard that a classmate called Hitler “the G.O.A.T.”
“I feel very uncomfortable in this school, and the comments just make it worse and worse every day.”
Kaminsky, who joined Origins in 2017 after working four years in Long Island, has experienced antisemitism only at the DOE school, she said.
Kaminsky is pro-Israel, but aims for neutrality in lessons and at cultural events, she said: “As history teachers, we know how to discuss controversial and sensitive topics while looking at all points of view, and encouraging kids to become critical thinkers.”
It’s widely known among students that Kaminsky is Jewish, though she doesn’t make a point of it, she said.
Her students routinely draw swastikas next to their names on classwork, engrave the Nazi symbol on their desks, and scribble them on bulletin boards, she said.
An Israeli flag – one of nearly 200 from countries around the world that Kaminsky hangs in her classroom – was ripped down in the spring of 2021.
A group of girls told her it was taken across the street and burned.
“I’ve been yelled at, followed, taunted,” Kaminsky said. “I report everything to the principal. I’ve been to a school safety committee. I’ve told my union, the UFT. I’ve told my superintendent,” Brooklyn South high schools chief Michael Prayor.
They’ve offered little help.
“Nothing has made me feel safe going to school,” she said.
“I used to get involved in after-school clubs, sports, and Regents prep. Now I don’t want to stay in the building any longer than I have to.”
“It’s heartbreaking,” said a non-Jewish female student who graduated in June and now attends SUNY. “I love Miss Kaminsky. During my junior and senior years, she was one of the teachers I could confide in, and she would help with whatever I needed. She cares about her job. She’s trying. She’s working in a system that doesn’t support her.”
Jews are not the only target of hate.
The same week in October when three swastikas were scrawled on walls and other objects, “KKK” was written on a black girl’s notebook; and the n-word used against other black girls, Beaudry reported.
“The LGBTQ community is being taunted and terrorized every single day,” he said.
“One of my students who identifies as gay told me he’s been bullied to the point where he doesn’t want to come to school anymore.”
When Beaudry urged the youth to submit statements on the abuse, the teen replied, “It’s a waste of time because they don’t go anywhere.”
During an assembly in November, when a gay teacher announced a new LGBTQ club, “a mob” erupted, Beaudry said. “They started ripping stuff off the walls. They chanted ‘kill the f—-ts’ and ‘stop with the gay shit.'”
One kid threw an object that hit a teacher in the head.
Teachers locked their classroom doors during the ruckus to protect other students and themselves.
“The school is a ticking time bomb,” said Beaudry, 48, an ex-cop and father of three.
Kammerman has failed to record many cases of violence and misconduct in the DOE’s incident-reporting system, charged Beaudry, who is responsible for the operations and safety of the Frank J. Macchiarola campus.
The building also houses two charter schools and a DOE transfer school for older kids behind in credits.
The other schools have posed no unusual problems, he said.
Beaudry has filed 15 complaints against Kammerman with the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools.
One alleged that the acting principal left the school building after a student had collapsed in cardiac distress — not waiting for the ambulance or the boy’s frantic parents to arrive.
The SCI referred all of the complaints back to the DOE to handle internally, a spokesman said.
But Kammerman, who became acting principal 14 months ago when John Banks was promoted to deputy superintendent, has issued dozens of disciplinary warnings to Beaudry and Kaminsky in what they call retaliation.
The principal has accused both of various offenses, including insubordination for actions like calling parents without her permission, but neither has been officially charged.
Kaminsky and Beaudry asked City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov and ex-Assemblyman Dov Hikind, founder of Americans Against Antisemitism, to intervene.
They contacted Mark Goldfeder, senior counsel with the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law.
The center is preparing to file a civil-rights lawsuit on behalf of Kaminsky, Beaudry and potentially others, he said.
“Even in this time of heightened antisemitism, I am shocked at the level of depravity on display here, and at the administration’s callous, indefensible tolerance of it,” Goldfeder said. “Antisemitism, like all forms of hate, is not intuitive. It must be learned. Apparently, it is being taught at Origins, and that is simply unacceptable.”
Vernikov said she has reviewed dozens of complaints and spoken with teachers, parents and students.
“The horror described by those who teach and attend this school is beyond belief,” she said. “It has become abundantly clear that this school is a living hell hole for so many. If immediate change is not made, many will continue to suffer.”
“This kind of hate within our school system must end. The Jewish community is tired of empty words. Action is needed. Consequences are needed,” Hikind said.
Vernikov and Hikind plan to hold a press conference with Kaminsky and Beaudry outside the school at 10:30 am Sunday.
Kammerman did not return a request for comment.
In a statement, DOE spokesman Nathaniel Styer praised Kammerman and superintendent Michael Prayor.
“Principal Kammerman has a track record of building bridges across an incredibly diverse school community and supporting students, staff, and families. That track record includes effectively handling incidents of bias brought to her attention. The principal has brought in outside organizations to help students learn and grow, while making it clear that hate – including antisemitism – has no place in our schools, and the superintendent has been engaged in supporting school leadership and staff in that effort,” Styer said.
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