People say the the world has changed.  They say anti-semitism is gone.  Well if you said that, you’d be wrong.  In 2015, fifty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, I still had to deal with anti-semitism (discrimination against Jews).  The world has not changed.  Last year, two boys came to me at separate times with anti-semitic remarks.  Two years ago, a girl came to me with another anti-semitic remark.  I pretend it doesn’t bother me, but it does.

The girl was sitting at my lunch table in fifth grade.  We were neither friends nor enemies until that day.  She was friends with of many of my friends and all of us were talking.  That was when she said it.  “Shut up you little Jewish chicken”. 

One of the boys was in my advanced math class, and sat right behind me.  We hated each other.  We were talking, and then out of the blue he said, “I wish you died in the Holocaust.”  When I told the teacher, he denied the whole thing.  He probably didn’t even know when the Holocaust happened.

 
The other boy was the only one who was forced by a teacher to apologize.  I didn’t really know who he was.  However, he came up to me during lunch and said “I wish Hitler was still alive”.  He didn’t know what the Holocaust was, but his friend dared him to say it.

This is what I have encountered so far.  Sadly, I think I will have to deal with many more anti-semitic comments.  It is so important for people to understand how discrimination affects their peers.