Suspensions abound in West Virginia after about 30 state employees cheerfully invoked the mannerisms of devotees of the Third Reich in a graduation picture. The people in the photo work within the state’s Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety (DMAPS), and had just completed a five-week “basic training class” to be correctional officers. According to CNN, the offensive photograph was “printed, copied, and placed into the graduation packet of each corrections officer,” perhaps for home framing. Notably, the photograph released to the media by DMAPS has the participants’ faces blurred, and is stamped “Hail Byrd!”
The “Heil Hitler” salute, of course, was a staple of Nazi Germany, used to note Adolf Hitler’s genocidal power before and during World War II, when his murderous Holocaust led to the slaughter of millions of Jews. Officials maintain that the caption, “Hail Byrd,” doesn’t refer to former West Virginia Senator and Ku Klux Klan member Robert Byrd; rather, the Byrd in question is the training class’s instructor.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice called for the terminations of every person involved in the particularly hateful stunt.
“I have directed [DMAPS] Secretary Jeff Sandy of the Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety to continue actively investigating this incident and I have ordered the termination of all those that are found to be involved in this conduct,” he said in a statement. “This will not be tolerated on my watch – within the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation – or within any agency of state government.”
In an interview with the Charleston Gazette-Mail, one of the state legislature’s Jewish delegates, Democrat Mike Pushkin of Kanawha County, stated the obvious: These people have no business being correctional officers, a position which allows them to wield extraordinary power over others. “At best this is an extreme lack of judgement for people who have a lot of power over other people’s lives. At worst, it’s just blatant anti-Semitism, and it’s disgusting.”
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin also strongly condemned the display of ignorance and bigotry, as did Rabbi Victor Urecki, of Charleston’s B’nai Jacob Synagogue.
“Seeing the photo was deeply shocking and troubling to me and I know it will be devastating to not just members of my community but any person of decency,” he said. “This will create difficult days and hard conversations for our state. While I want to hear more about how it all unfolded, this terrible incident reminds me we have a lot of work to do in educating about the dangers of hate and the evils perpetrated in the past and can happen again.”
Anti-Semitic incidents have drastically increased in this country during the Trump administration. A substantial majority of American Jews attribute the increase in such hate to Donald Trump’s deliberate embrace of white supremacy and “winking” acceptance of groups that espouse anti-Semitic rhetoric and beliefs.
Whether these would-be prison guards actually fancy themselves as heirs to the Waffen SS, or whether their gestures as shown in the photograph above were simply their idea of a “funny” stunt, what’s most remarkable is that nearly all appear to consider this to be normal, acceptable behavior, and obviously gave no thought to the consequences or impact of what they were doing.
