The senior’s unattributed quote echoed Hitler and Nazi propaganda minister Goebbles
A Massachusetts high school has halted yearbook sales after realizing that a senior quote inside was linked to Adolf Hitler.
‘Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it,’ read the quote under one senior’s photo in the Andover High School yearbook, the school realized this week.
The quote, though not word for word, seems to reference the concept of the ‘big lie’ famous from the writings of both Hitler and Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbles.
Horrified at the discovery, the school halted yearbook sales and is offering a special sticker to those who have already bought one to cover the offending quote.
‘We are appalled and angered that this quote was submitted, and I ask you to please accept my deepest apologies on behalf of our faculty, staff, and administration for the insertion of these words in the yearbook,’ the principal, Philip Conrad, wrote in a letter of apology to parents this week.
‘Quoting a racist dictator bent on genocide or his minister of propaganda has no place in our school or our community and it is deeply upsetting to all of us.’
![The principal of Andover High School (above) in Massachusetts issued a letter of apology to parents this week after the unattributed quote was discovered in the school yearbook](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/06/16/18/4D4F3A4300000578-0-image-a-15_1529169768752.jpg)
The principal of Andover High School (above) in Massachusetts issued a letter of apology to parents this week after the unattributed quote was discovered in the school yearbook
![Sales of the yearbook (cover seen above) were halted and a customized sticker has been issued to all who already bought one to cover up the offending quotation](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/06/16/18/4D4F3A3F00000578-0-image-m-21_1529170547107.jpg)
Sales of the yearbook (cover seen above) were halted and a customized sticker has been issued to all who already bought one to cover up the offending quotation
The unidentified student has said he didn’t realize the origin of the quote, and a local rabbi who consulted with school administrators says he doesn’t believe the student’s intent was to glorify Hitler.
‘It kind of slipped through,’ Rabbi Robert Goldstein told Fox25. ‘And again, innocent on everyone’s part, I believe. Obviously one has to separate the source, that is offensive, but the intent was not.
‘And I think we have to be really careful about clarifying that and understand that this student was not doing something to deliberately hurt anybody.’
Andover High is a public high school, not to be confused with the elite Phillips Andover Academy, a private prep school in the same town.
Hitler introduced the concept of the ‘big lie’ in his jailhouse autobiography, Mein Kampf, in which he accused ‘the Jews’ of twisting the history of World War I to blame a German general that Hitler admired for the country’s loss.
![Hitler (center) and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbles (left) both wrote about the 'big lie', accusing their enemies of making ridiculous fabrications as a deliberate tactic](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/06/16/18/4D4F39DB00000578-0-image-a-19_1529169943229.jpg)
Hitler (center) and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbles (left) both wrote about the ‘big lie’, accusing their enemies of making ridiculous fabrications as a deliberate tactic
‘All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility’ Hitler wrote, reasoning that average people ‘themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.’
The Nazi dictator’s top propaganda lieutenant, Goebbles, expressed a similar sentiment in a 1941 essay blasting the British, titled Churchill’s Lie Factory.
‘The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous,’ Goebbles wrote.
Another quote, which is widely attributed to Goebbles across the internet but appears to be fabricated, reads: ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.’