| Student causes stir with Hitler costume
NEW YORK - A Brooklyn high school student caused a stir when he showed up for class dressed as Adolf Hitler for Halloween.
Walter Petryk, 16, defended his costume Tuesday, insisting it was a satire of the Nazi dictator.
But some students and officials at Leon M. Goldstein High School were not impressed.
School administrators ordered the junior honors student to remove his beige coat bearing a red swastika armband or possibly face spending the day in the office, Petryk told the New York Post for Wednesday editions.
Petryk refused, saying his parody was protected by his right to freedom of expression.
Petryk's stepfather, Howard Bloom, who is Jewish and lost relatives during the Nazi genocide, told the Post he was initially "very disturbed" by the costume but nonetheless defended his stepson's rights.
"If he had wanted to advocate my genocide, I wouldn't have allowed" the costume, Bloom said. "That wasn't the spirit in which he was doing this at all. He was doing it in the spirit of Monty Python and Mel Brooks."
The city's Department of Education discipline code allows for the removal of students from class if they wear clothing that causes a disruption.
In order to avoid a disruption on the way to school, Petryk disguised his Hitler getup as a costume of Charlie Chaplin, adding a bowler hat and cane.
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-HECK! | |
You're like me in a bar fight. I see the big dude with the tattoos and and shaved head getting tired (but he's still laying a few kicks into the gut of some big biker fellow on the ground) and so I break a chair over his head. Yay me!