Teacher who flew Nazi flag says she didn’t do anything wrong

Scott Sonner

Thursday, April 13, 2000 | 10:22 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - A Reno middle school teacher said she agreed to stop flying a Nazi flag in her classroom out of respect for an upcoming Jewish holiday but still believes she was right to use the flag to spur learning about World War II.

Kara Lake, 26, said she continues to display the flag with an iron cross and black swastika on a bulletin board in her eighth-grade history classroom at Vaughn Middle School.

She said she removed it from wires hanging from the ceiling last week after Jewish leaders explained the symbolism of "flying" the flag in class.

"It was not completely taken down. That would convey that I thought I did something wrong. I still do not think I did anything wrong," Lake said Wednesday.

"I'm still trying to educate my children and spark their learning," she said. "It is still on display on the bulletin board and it will be on display until we finish the unit," most likely by the end of the week.

Lake had hung the German battle flag from the ceiling with the U.S. and Japanese flags.

A Jewish teacher at the school initially objected and the Jewish Defense League and NCAAP joined the call for the flag's removal last week.

Lake removed the flag from the ceiling Friday after meeting the day before with Jewish leaders, including Myra Soifer, rabbi of Temple Sinai, and Abraham Keller, rabbi of Temple Emanu-El. Keller's synagogue was the target of an attempted fire-bombing Nov. 30 in which five self-described white supremacists have been charged.

Lake declined comment last week, but said in a telephone interview Wednesday she wanted to explain her actions. She said the rabbis did a good job of explaining how "hanging the flag from the wires was showing honor to that flag.

"Obviously that was not my intention at all. It never crossed my mind. I think it was a generational thing," Lake said.

"That symbolism had not been instilled in my generation and certainly not instilled in my students' generation," she said.

Soifer praised Lake for moving the flag to the bulletin board, from where it is being removed and stored at the end of each day. She said the Nazi flag had no place flying along side the U.S. flag.

"It is the foremost symbol and reminder of the genocidal horror of the Holocaust. It reminds us that such hate continues ... even at our own community as the recent fire-bombing of the Temple Emanu-El demonstrated all too clearly," Soifer said.

Lake said she still feels strongly about using teaching aids in the classroom but she "knew Passover was coming up and I didn't want to show any insensitivity to their Jewish holiday.

"As far as flying the flags, I never thought I was flying them. I didn't have a whole lot more wall space. I have the wires there where I display all sorts of projects. That's the only reason it was up there in the first place," she said.