One Polish-American’s Fight to include the Genocide of Poles in Virginia’s High-School Curriculum
How Virginia’s educational, executive, and legislative authorities and the U.S Department of Education enabled the suppression of historical fact and ignored an embarrassing deception.
Part 1 – Asking the Department of Education to Correct Flawed Standards of Learning
Falsified and Flawed Standards in Virginia’s 2015 Standards of Learning
March-June 2022. Gene Sokolowski’s efforts to correct Virginia’s curriculum began in June 2022, when he noticed that Standard WHII.11d in the 2015 Standards of Learning for World History and Geography changed two of the four victim groups of genocide so that Poles and Romani were excluded. It is historical fact that Hitler committed genocide against Poles and Romani as well as Jews. Mr. Sokolowski questioned why only the genocide of Jews was cited. This was especially puzzling because the historical record shows that Hitler began his genocidal campaign against Poles before Jews and Romani, as evidenced by Operation Tannenberg and Intelligenzaktion. The historical record also had a personal dimension; Mr. Sokolowski’s father Jan survived the concentration camps of Gross Rosen, Dachau, Natzweiler Struthof, and Neuengamme.
The specific issue with the Standard was that it contradicted Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention, which defines the four victim groups of genocide as racial, religious, ethnic, and national. By contrast, the Standard defined them as racial, religious, cultural, and political. Because Poles are an ethnic and national group, and Romani are an ethnic group, the Standard removed them as genocide victims.
Mr. Sokolowski found it surprising that the Standard required the student to examine Hitler’s genocide of Jews “and other examples of genocide in the twentieth century” but Poles and Romani were not listed under “other examples of genocides”. He found this requirement further odd because Nazism’s Racial Purity ideology declared Slavs, Jews, and Romani as inferior races and purposely targeted them for extermination and enslavement.
It was apparent that altering the victim groups of genocide so that Poles and Romani were excluded and omitting them from the list of “other examples of genocide” was the result of intent rather than incompetence by the Advisory Committee, whose formal name is the “Culturally Relevant and Inclusive Educational Practices Advisory Committee”. Sokolowski also noticed glaring inaccuracies in other Standards authored by the Advisory Council.
For example, Standard WHII.10f required students to “examine the rise of totalitarianism” during the interwar period, 1918 to 1939. Under Hitler’s totalitarianism, the Standard listed “Final solution, Extermination camps, gas chambers”, which is factually false. These horrors occurred later during World War II. On the other hand, crimes committed by the Stalin regime during the pre-war period were entirely missing. Under Stalin’s totalitarianism, the Holodomor occurred, which was Stalin’s man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions and was meant to subdue the Ukraine population.
Standard WHII.11a required students to “explain the economic and political causes of World War II”. The sole focus on Hitler’s actions in the context of economic and political issues is misleading and factually incorrect. Hitler and Stalin attacked Poland together primarily because of their ideologies. Hitler used Nazism’s Racial Purity and Lebensraum ideologies to justify his invasion while Stalin used his version of communism as justification. Neither attacked Poland for “economic and political” reasons. Their Molotov-Ribbentrop nonaggression pact contained a secret protocol that divided Poland between them and in the first two years of the war, Poles were the primary target of a coordinated German and Soviet extermination process designed to annihilate them on both sides of the Ribbentrop-Molotov line. On the German side, they were killed because they were regarded as racially inferior. On the Soviet side, they were killed as Polish bourgeoisie who oppressed the working class.
Standard WHII.11c required students to “describe the major events of the war and the role of new technologies”. Here, critical historical events were again missing. The “German invasion of Poland” was listed as a major event but the Soviet invasion of Poland was absent. The only new technology listed was “Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki”. Radar was absent as was the breaking of the Enigma code by Polish mathematicians. Two weeks before Germany invaded, the Poles turned their information and Enigma machines over to the British, who later set up a secret code-breaking group known as Ultra. This shortened the war, saved thousands of lives, and contributed to the Allied victory over Germany.
Standard WHII.12a required students to “explain the causes of the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe”. The sequence of collapse was incorrect; communism fell in Eastern Europe before it did in the Soviet Union. The generalized term “Nationalism in Warsaw Pact countries” was listed as a casual factor for communism’s collapse but this oversimplification hid the fact that Poland’s nine-year Solidarity movement was the catalyst for communism’s fall throughout Eastern Europe. It wasn’t nationalism that led millions of ordinary citizens to join Solidarity; it was the common desire to be freed from an absurd system that exploited workers while professing to protect them. Poland was the first to defeat communism and the remaining countries followed soon thereafter. A second casual factor of communism’s collapse was listed as “the expansion of NATO”, which is also factually incorrect. The first Eastern European countries that joined NATO were Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. They became NATO members in March 1999, well after communism fell in their countries.
Poland was also treated as if it didn’t exist. Standard WHII.5a required students to “locate European nations and their empires from about 1500 A.D. to about 1800 A.D.”; but the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in power from 1569 to 1795, was absent from the list, despite the fact that it was one of the largest and most populous countries of the time and sustained a multi-ethnic population of almost 12 million. The same Standard required students to “locate major geographic features of Europe”, yet the only mountains listed were the Alps and Urals. Missing were the Carpathians, which are the third-longest European mountain range and form Poland’s southern border.
Sokolowski submitted these factual errors to the Department of Education (DOE), Division of School Quality, Instruction, and Performance. Although receipt of his submission was acknowledged, no action was taken to revise the Standards.
Critically Flawed Standards in the June 2022 Draft of Virginia’s 2023 Standards of Learning
June-August 2022. In June 2022, DOE issued the first draft of the new Standards of Learning. Virginia law requires the Standards to be updated every seven years. He then saw that Standard WHII.10c in the June Draft repeated the two falsified victim groups of genocide carried by the 2015 Standards for seven years.
Another Standard further corroborated what he saw was an apparent attempt to conceal the fact that Poles and Romani were genocide victims. Standard WHII 10d required the student to examine the effects, i.e., outcomes, of the war and cited the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as an important outcome, which the UN approved on 10 December 1948. However, the Standard excludes the 1948 Genocide Convention, which is an unmistakably important outcome of the war, and which the UN approved on 9 December 1948, one day before it approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The 1948 Genocide Convention is an important outcome because the concept of genocide did not exist at the time and was developed in response to Hitler’s atrocities against Poles and Jews. Rafal Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, was the leading author and proponent of the 1948 Genocide Convention. It was enforced as international law in 1951 and ratified by 152 states. By contrast, the Declaration of Human Rights does not address genocide nor does it contain the word “genocide”.
It was apparent to Sokolowski that, if Virginia students reviewed Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention, they would see that the 2015 Standards falsified two of the four victim groups. They would also discover that there are five acts of genocide, and that all five acts were committed against Poles while four were committed against Jews and Romani. As a result, students and teachers would learn that Hitler’s genocidal campaign was conducted against victim groups other than Jews.
Sokolowski submitted these and other corrections to DOE but, unsurprisingly, no action was taken.
Part 2 – Notifying the Board of Education of the
Advisory Committee’s Falsified and Flawed Standards
August 2022-March 2023. In August 2022, Sokolowski submitted to the Board of Education the same criticisms he submitted earlier to the Department of Education for the June 2022 Draft. Predictably, no acknowledgement was received.
The next significant action in the Standards of Learning update process was establishing a schedule of public hearings for members of the public to present their concerns to the Board of Education about the latest version of the Standards of Learning. The hearings were scheduled for September 2022 but the date was continually pushed back. In January 2023, the latest Draft of the Standards of Learning was issued and in February, the hearing schedule was finally published. As one of the hearings was slated for March 14, 2023, at the George Washington Presidential Library in Mount Vernon, he selected this venue to present his comments.
Earlier, the Department of Education announced that comments on the January 2023 draft could be emailed to the Board prior to the hearing. On March 12 he submitted a seven-page document to the Board explaining how the Advisory Committee falsified two of the four victim groups of genocide in the 2015 Standards of Learning. He asked the Board to investigate the Committee’s misconduct and make its findings public. He also identified key facts missing from the January 2023 version. On 29 March, he received a reply stating that “your comments will be shared with the Board.” However, the Board took no action nor did it contact him for further information.
In addressing the January 2023 Draft of the Standards, Sokolowski pointed out that Standard WHII.9a asked students to identify major leaders of World War II but it omitted Stalin, who attacked Poland together with Hitler in September 1939. Standard WHII.9f asked students to identify heroic aspects of the war but omitted the rescue of Polish Jews by Poles. Only in Poland did the Germans order the death penalty for the rescuer and immediate family members. The Standard also listed the French Resistance as a heroic aspect but excluded the Polish Underground State’s clandestine military and civilian resistance structures, which had no parallel in any other country and fought the Germans and Soviets throughout their occupations from 1939 to 1945. By contrast, French Resistance activities mainly entailed supporting the 1944 Normandy invasion.
Standard WHII.10d asked students to explain the actions of key individuals who helped communism collapse in Eastern Europe. Absent was Lech Walesa and Poland’s nine-year Solidarity movement, which was the catalyst that enabled the other countries to follow suit. Instead, Vaclav Havel and the 12-day Velvet Revolution was cited, which occurred four months after Poland held partially free elections in June 1989. It was evident to Sokolowski that the Advisory Committee purposely suppressed critically relevant and historically laudable facts about Poland during World War II and the communist period.
At the hearing on March 14, over 100 individuals were waiting to present their comments. As a result, the Board announced that comments were to be limited to two minutes instead of the previously allotted three minutes. The Board also asked speakers to provide written copies of their comments, which Sokolowski did, and it also made a video recording of each speaker’s comments. He was assigned as Speaker 52 and, after 90 minutes, he was called to the podium. The following are the comments he was able to read in the allotted two minutes:
“Learning Standard WHII 9 contains key material omissions that severely distort the history of World War II in Europe and must be corrected.
Standard 9.d is the only Standard that addresses genocide but only addresses the Holocaust. This is discriminatory because it is historical fact that Hitler also committed genocide against Poles and Romani. This omission also violates the Code of Virginia, Title 22.1-208.02, paragraph B.1, which requires the Advisory Committee to “provide standards recommendations that include the historical underpinnings of the Holocaust and other historical genocides…” The key underpinnings of these three genocides were Nazism’s destructive ideologies of Lebensraum and Racial Purity. Nazism’s Racial Purity ideology declared Jews, Slavs, and Romani as inferior races deserving of extermination and enslavement, which is why Jews, Poles, and Romani were singled out for genocide.
Standard 9.e requires the student to “examine important outcomes of the war” but excludes the 1948 Genocide Convention, which codified genocide as a crime and was created in response to the atrocities of the war, which at the time lacked adequate legal definition. Virginia teachers and students will best understand genocide by examining the Convention’s five acts of genocide and the corresponding atrocities Hitler committed against the three victim groups.
Standard 9.a requires the student to “explain the economic and political causes of the war” but excludes the ideological causes of the war in Europe, which began when Hitler and Stalin attacked Poland together in September 1939. Hitler used Nazism’s Lebensraum ideology to justify his attack and Stalin used his form of communist ideology to justify his attack.
Standard 9.f requires the student to “describe the heroic aspects” of World War II yet excludes Polish efforts to save Jews. Despite the standing order that anyone aiding a Jew would be executed together with immediate family, …” (At this point, the Board member’s timer sounded and he had to stop. The remainder of the comment was: “… and many Poles were. Two Polish organizations aided tens of thousands of Jews. These were the Catholic Church and Żegota.”)
Although Board members at the hearing appeared to be impassive, Sokolowski was struck by the expression of one woman whose jaw visibly dropped and eyes opened widely. By contrast, and as the Board’s video recording will show, he received considerable applause at the end of his presentation.
Part 3 – Notifying the Secretary of Education as the Acting State Superintendent of Public Instruction
of the Advisory Committee’s Falsified and Flawed Standards
March-April 2023. On 21 March 2023, Sokolowski submitted a letter to the Acting State Superintendent of Public Instruction, who at the time was Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera. The letter was submitted through the Email form on the Secretary’s website and pointed out three actions by the Advisory Committee that misrepresented historical facts and required remediation.
The first action was the Committee’s falsification of the victim groups of genocide in the 2015 Standards of Learning. As previously pointed out, Standard WHII.10c listed the victim groups of genocide as racial, religious, cultural, and political. By contrast, Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention lists the victim groups as racial, religious, ethnic, and national. As with his earlier request to the Board of Education, he asked the Secretary to have the Committee’s actions investigated and make the investigation’s findings publicly available.
The second was the Committee’s exclusion of the 1948 Genocide Convention as an important outcome of the war in the January 2023 Draft of the Standards of Learning. Although the Guiding Principles on page 7 stated “Students will study the horrors of war and genocide”, Sokolowski pointed out this could not be satisfactorily done without the 1948 Genocide Convention, which is the internationally-approved authoritative source that specifies the four victim groups of genocide and defines the five acts of genocide. It was apparent that the omission of the 1948 Genocide Convention in Standard WHII.9e was intentional as students and teachers would discover that the Advisory Committee falsified two of the four victim groups of genocide and by doing so, concealed the fact that Poles and Romani were victims.
The third action was Standard WHII.9d in the January 2023 Draft, which was the single Standard that addressed World War II genocide. However, it only cited the Holocaust, which is the popularized term for Hitler’s genocide of European Jews. Sokolowski pointed out that the Standard was discriminatory because it omitted the genocide of Poles and Romani, and he asked that an additional Standard be inserted that includes them.
After he sent his letter through the Secretary’s website email form, Sokolowski received an acknowledgement that his submission was received. Oddly, it was sent by the Office of the Governor. Unsurprisingly, no further communication was provided.
Part 4 – Notifying the Lieutenant Governor and New State Superintendent of Public Instruction
of the Advisory Committee’s Falsified and Flawed Standards
April-July 2023. On 2 April 2023, Sokolowski wrote to Lieutenant Governor Earle-Sears notifying her of the Advisory Committee’s three actions that he submitted to Acting State Superintendent of Public Instruction one month earlier. The first action was the Committee’s falsification of the victim groups of genocide in the 2015 Standards of Learning. The second was the Advisory Committee’s exclusion of the 1948 Genocide Convention in Standard WHII.9e of the January 2023 Draft Standards of Learning, despite the fact that it required Virginia students to “study the horrors of war and genocide”. The third action was Standard WHII.9 in the January 2023 Draft, which he pointed out was discriminatory because it excluded Poles and Romani as victims of Hitler’s genocide.
He asked the Lieutenant Governor to investigate the first two issues and make the investigation’s findings public. To resolve the third issue of discrimination, he asked to have Standard WHII.9d revised as follows: “describe the key causes, events, and impact of Hitler’s genocide of Jews, Poles, and Romani by examining Nazism’s destructive ideologies of Racial Purity and Lebensraum and the 1948 Genocide Convention’s definition of genocide and the five acts of genocide.”
On the same day the letter was submitted, he received a reply that read in part “We appreciate your ideas, feedback, and requests. All correspondence will be reviewed by a member of our Constituent Services staff. If your submission requires a response, we will get back to you in the order of which your email has been received.” Unsurprisingly, the Constituent Services Staff did not reply further.
On 19 April 2023, two days after Lisa Coons assumed her duties as the new State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Sokolowski sent a letter notifying her of the same three issues that he presented to Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears. The letter asked Coons to act on each issue and reply with the action that would be taken. Predictably, no reply was provided.
As the Lieutenant Governor’s 2 April 2023 reply was evasive, Sokolowski asked to meet with her on two subsequent occasions. On 26 May 2023, he received the following noncommittal reply: “Governor Youngkin challenged both the Department and Board of Education to create best in class history standards that teach all history, the good and the bad. The standards were developed in partnership with hundreds across the nation, and through public comments and feedback sessions with Virginians.” Sokolowski again asked to meet but as before, no reply was provided.
Part 5 – Complaint of Discrimination submitted to U.S. Department of Education’s
Office of Civil Rights – Incompetence, Evasion, and Wrongful Dismissals
First Discrimination Complaint Submission
May – August 2023. On 16 May 2023, Sokolowski used the format on the website of the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) and submitted a discrimination complaint against the Virginia Board of Education, Secretary of Education, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Department of Education.
As the discriminatory act, he identified Standard WHII.9d in the 2023 Standards of Learning, which was approved by the Board of Education on 20 April 2023. He argued that Standard WHII.9d discriminated against Virginians of Polish and Romani descent, and discriminated in favor of Virginians of Jewish descent. Poles, Romani, and Jews were genocide victims during World War II but the Standard only identified Jews as genocide victims.
The law violated was cited as Title VI, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq, which states, in part, “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of … national origin … be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
The remedy he sought was to revise Standard WHII 9 so that all three genocides are addressed together with the Nazi ideologies that motivated the genocides and the authoritative source document, the 1948 Genocide Convention, that defines genocide and the five acts that constitute genocide.
The complaint was assigned Case Number 11-23-4057. On 23 July, Sokolowski emailed the assigned attorney, Sarah Morgan, explaining that the Standard was also discriminatory because it satisfied the three criteria of the legal definition of discrimination provided by Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute. The Institute’s legal definition of discrimination is: “Different treatment for similarly situated parties, especially when no legitimate reason appears to exist.”
The definition’s first criterion, similarly situated parties, was satisfied as Jews, Poles, and Romani were subjected to genocide at the same time, by the same Germans, for the same reason, which was Nazism’s ideology of Racial Purity. It decreed that Jews, Slavs, and Romani were inferior races and in order for the German Aryan race to survive, maintaining racial purity was crucial because intermixing with the inferior races would contaminate it to the point of extinction. The German Aryan race therefore had the duty to exterminate and enslave the inferior races.
The second criterion was satisfied as the three groups were treated differently by the Advisory Committee. Jews were cited as the only genocide victims. Code of Virginia, Title 22.1-208.02, paragraph B.1, required the Advisory Committee to “provide standards recommendations that include the historical underpinnings of the Holocaust and other historical genocides…” However, Standard WHII 9.d excluded the “other historical genocide” of Poles and Romani. The third criterion was satisfied as well; there was no legitimate reason for the Advisory Committee to exclude Poles and Romani as genocide victims.
On 10 August 2023, Sokolowski received a letter from OCR stating that his case was dismissed. The justification cited was Section 108(f) of OCR’s Case Processing Manual, which said that the complaint failed to cite the law that OCR is responsible for enforcing and was violated. This was false. The complaint cited Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq., which prohibits discrimination based on national origin, and which OCR is responsible for enforcing. The letter was signed by D. Frank Vinik, whose signature title was “Team IV Team Leader”. A further absurdity of the letter was that OCR’s online complaint submission form does not require the complainant to cite the law that was violated.
Resubmission of Discrimination Complaint
September 2023-February 2024. On 29 September, Sokolowski resubmitted his discrimination complaint, adding an additional law that OCR was responsible for enforcing. The law was 34 C.F.R. Part 100, § 100.3(a) and 100.3 (b)(5), which repeats the elements of the Title VI provision he cited in his first complaint submission. The complaint was accepted and assigned a new Case Number, 11-23-4074.
After two months, Jan Gray was assigned as the case attorney. Having been told repeatedly by Ms. Gray that his case was under evaluation rather than being investigated, Sokolowski again asked for the status of the case on 15 February 2024. The very next day, on 16 February, Gray replied by email, which contained a letter that dismissed the case. The letter was signed by Sarah Morgan, whose signature title was “Acting Team IV Team Leader”.
Morgan’s letter cited Section 110(j) of OCR’s Case Processing Manual as justification for dismissal; however, this was invalid. It states that “OCR may close or dismiss a case if OCR has recently addressed or is currently addressing the same allegation(s) involving the same recipient in a compliance review, directed investigation or an OCR complaint.”
In this case, the “recent addressal” was Vinnik’s invalid dismissal of the first complaint. Morgan claimed that this invalid dismissal sufficiently satisfied the meaning of “recently addressed” and thereby justified dismissal of the second complaint submission.
It was apparent to Sokolowski that, after more than five months of inaction, Morgan and Gray sought any excuse to avoid investigating the complaint. Despite the extensive evidence he provided confirming that the Standard was discriminatory, the two attorneys refused to investigate because the intellectual effort to do so was apparently too demanding.
This was evident in Morgan’s deceptive reply to Sokolowski’s request to reinstate the complaint, which stated: “Your complaint was dismissed because it raised concerns about the state’s curriculum. As stated in the letter, pursuant to longstanding OCR policy, OCR generally refrains from assessing the appropriateness of an educational institution’s decisions regarding curriculum and instructional materials.” The fact is that Sokolowski argued the Standard was discriminatory; by contrast, Morgan claimed Sokolowski argued that the Standard was inappropriate. The two refusals to evaluate and investigate a complaint of academic discrimination were clearly gross derelictions of these individuals’ responsibility.
Part 6 – Complaint of Discrimination submitted to Virginia Attorney General’s
Office of Civil Rights – Incompetence and Evasion
September 2023- January 2024. On 29 September 2023, Sokolowski submitted a complaint of discrimination to the Virginia Attorney General’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR). The complaint followed the same format and contained the same specifics as the complaint of discrimination he submitted to the U.S. Department of Education’s OCR.
As the OCR did not acknowledge receipt of his submission, Sokolowski sent three emails requesting acknowledgement. Having still not received a reply, he sent a letter on 30 October to Attorney General Jason Miyares, asking him to intervene and require the OCR to acknowledge receipt of the complaint and begin an investigation.
On 30 November, Sokolowski finally received a letter from the Intake Manager, Timothy Wilson, confirming receipt of his complaint. Oddly, the first sentence of the first paragraph stated: “…OCR has received the above referenced complaint…”; however, the letter had no subject line and nowhere in the letter was the complaint cited. It also said that the complaint form will be held “in abeyance until the hard copy with your client’s original signature is received in blue or black ink.” Because the word “client” appeared in the letter three times, the OCR apparently believed Sokolowski was an attorney representing a client. Furthermore, neither the OCR’s online complaint form nor its website page made any mention of a requirement to scan the form, sign it in blue or black ink, or mail it by through the postal system.
As a result, Sokolowski sent a second letter to the Attorney General, asking him again to intervene and require his OCR to correctly acknowledge receipt of the complaint. On 11 January 2024, Sokolowski received a letter from OCR that stated the following: “OCR has completed a review of your complaint and has determined that it possibly falls within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. Therefore, this office has referred your complaint to that agency.” As in the case of the Department of Education’s OCR, the Virginia OCR refused to investigate because the intellectual effort required to do so was too demanding. This refusal to evaluate and investigate a complaint of academic discrimination in Virginia’s high-school curriculum constituted gross dereliction of state responsibility.
Part 7 – Reporting the Advisory Committee’s Fraudulent Conduct and Executive Agency
Dereliction of Responsibility to the Office of the State Inspector General
July – August 2023. On 29 July, Sokolowski sent a letter to the Office of the State Inspector General (OSIG) through the State Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Hotline, in which he submitted one allegation of fraudulent conduct by the Advisory Committee and two allegations of gross neglect of responsibility by the Department of Education, Board of Education, Secretary of Education, State Superintendent of Public Education, and Lieutenant Governor.
The fraudulent conduct was the Advisory Committee’s altering of two of the 1948 Genocide Convention’s four victim groups of genocide in the 2015 Standards so that Poles and Romani were excluded as genocide victims. The first instance of gross neglect of responsibility was each office’s inaction after being notified of the Advisory Committee’s misconduct and violation of public trust. The second instance was committed by the same five offices. Although each was notified that the Advisory Committee’s Standard WHII.9 in the 2023 Standards of Learning was discriminatory because it excluded Poles and Romani as genocide victims, none of the offices acted. Their inaction constituted complicity in the Advisory Committee’s misconduct and allowing the discriminatory Standard to remain in Virginia’s high-school curriculum.
OSIG assigned Case Number HL-2024-055 to his complaint and replied that his entire submission was forwarded to the Secretary of Education for action. Sokolowski replied stating that OSIG’s assignment of the complaint to the Secretary for action constituted a conflict of interest. OSIG replied stating that it “does not have jurisdiction over the Culturally Relevant and Inclusive Education Practices Advisory Committee.”
Sokolowski saw that OSIG’s reply was the same deceptive action taken by the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights and the Virginia Attorney General’s Office of Civil Rights. The subject of World War II genocide was entirely foreign to all three offices and the intellectual effort required to investigate the complaint was apparently too difficult.
In examining OSIG’s claim that it didn’t have jurisdiction over the Advisory Committee, Sokolowski found evidence to the contrary. Code of Virginia, Title 2.2-309, paragraph A.5, empowers the Inspector General to “investigate nonstate agencies to determine whether acts of fraud, waste, abuse, or corruption have been committed”. Paragraph C.2 requires OSIG to “directly investigate allegations of serious administrative violations”, and the fraudulent conduct and gross neglect of responsibility cited by Sokolowski were clearly such violations.
He also saw that the Advisory Committee met the definition of a nonstate agency as defined by Code of Virginia, Title 2.2-307. It was an “authority” that was “not a unit of state government” and was “wholly or principally supported by state funds”. It was inconceivable to Sokolowski that the Advisory Committee carried out its extensive list of responsibilities delineated in Code of Virginia, Title 22.1-208.02, without state funding.
Despite the provisions of the Code of Virginia, OSIG’s evasive action constituted gross neglect of state responsibility. In late August, Sokolowski emailed the Secretary of Education asking if the three complaints forwarded to her by OSIG were being investigated. Unsurprisingly, no answer was provided.
Part 8 – Reporting the Advisory Committee’s Fraudulent Conduct and
Executive Agency Dereliction of Responsibility to the Virginia Governor
September-October 2023. On 22 September 2023, Sokolowski submitted a five-page letter to Governor Youngkin explaining in detail the fraudulent conduct of the Advisory Committee and the two instances of gross neglect of state responsibility by Virginia’s four educational authorities and the Lieutenant Governor.
These were the same actions he reported to the State Inspector General. The fraudulent conduct was the Advisory Committee’s falsification of two of 1948 Genocide Convention’s four genocide victim groups in the 2015 Standards so that Poles and Romani were excluded as genocide victims.
The first instance of gross neglect of state responsibility was the refusal to investigate the Advisory Committee’s fraudulent conduct by the Department of Education, Board of Education, Secretary of Education, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Lieutenant Governor.
The second instance was the refusal by the same five offices to investigate the discriminatory Standard WHII.9d in the 2023 Standards that only cited Jews as Hitler’s genocide victims. It should be noted that Sokolowski notified the four educational authorities of discriminatory Standard before the 2023 Standards were approved on 20 April 2023.
The letter also explained OSIG’s evasive refusal to investigate his three complaints and that OSIG’s referral of the complaints to the Secretary of Education for action constituted a conflict of interest. This was because the Secretary was also cited for gross neglect of responsibility.
The letter further pointed out the direct connection between the Advisory Committee and the Commission to Combat Antisemitism, which was established by Governor Youngkin’s Executive Order 8 on 15 January 2022. The Executive Order established a commission that was to operate for 12 months and issue a report with recommendations to reduce antisemitic incidents in Virginia and compile materials for public schools and colleges linking antisemitism to the Holocaust.
The report’s third of six recommendations was on page 19 in the paragraph titled “Expand Holocaust Standards of Learning” and stated: “place the Holocaust in its own sub-standard (10c)”. The problem with this recommendation is that “sub-standard (10c)” was Standard WHII.10c in the 4 August 2022 Draft, in which the Advisory Committee falsified two of the 1948 Genocide Convention’s four victim groups of genocide so that Poles and Romani were excluded. As the last sentence of the paragraph shows, the Commission recommended that this third recommendation “be carried forth into the standards and framework that are presented for final review to the Virginia Board of Education.”
Sokolowski pointed out to the Governor that a comparison of the names of Commission members with those of the Advisory Committee showed that one individual was a member of both bodies, which explained why the Commission endorsed the falsified Standard in its report.
In the letter’s closing, Sokolowski requested the following actions from the Governor: (1) Direct the Secretary of Education to investigate the Advisory Committee’s falsification of two of the four victim groups of genocide; (2) Direct OSIG to investigate the two instances of gross neglect of responsibilities by the four educational authorities and the Lieutenant Governor as these executive branch entities were within OSIG’s jurisdiction.
As there was no response to his 22 September letter, he sent a second letter on 27 October 2022, requesting the same actions. Unsurprisingly, no response was provided.
Part 9 – Reporting the Advisory Committee’s Fraudulent Conduct and
Executive Agency Dereliction of Responsibility to the Virginia House and Senate
February – April 2024. Unable to obtain any response from Viriginia’s Executive branch agencies about the Advisory Committee’s falsification of Standard WHII.11d in the 2015 Standards of Learning and its discriminatory Standard WHII.9 in the 2023 Standards of Learning, Sokolowski reached out to four members of the State Legislature. The first two were Senator Jennifer Foy, who represented him in Virginia’s 33rd Senate District, and Delegate Rozia Henson, who represented him in Virginia’s 19th House District. The other two were Senator Ghazala Hashmi, Chair of the Senate Education and Health Committee, and Delegate Shelley Simonds, Chair of the House K-12 Subcommittee.
Sokolowski first asked to meet with Delegate Henson to explain why Standard WHII.9 in the 2023 Standards of Learning was discriminatory and how it could be easily resolved by the House K-12 Subcommittee. After a brief period of telephone tag between the two proved unsuccessful, Sokolowski exchanged emails with Henson’s staffer Max Jenkins. As the exchanges indicated no further action would be taken, Sokolowski emailed Delegate Simonds and asked to brief her and the members of the K-12 Subcommittee to explain why the 2015 and 2023 Standards were discriminatory and how the 2023 Standard can be easily remedied. He also pointed out that he had prepared a detailed briefing with text and slides that provided the facts for each of the two Standards.
As his email request went unanswered, he followed up with another request, which was answered by Simonds’s staffer Cheryl Wilfred. As there was no response to his invitation to discuss the briefing, he emailed Wilfred again asking her to convey two requests to Delegate Simonds that were outlined in the briefing. The first request was to intervene with the Governor and ask him to insert an additional Standard in the 2023 Standards that Sokolowski drafted so that Poles and Romani would be included as genocide victims. The second asked Delegate Simonds to convene the K-12 Subcommittee for the purpose of amending Virginia Code, Title 22.1, Section 208.02, paragraph B.1. The amendment would require inclusion of the genocides that occurred at the same time as that of European Jews. Predictably, no reply was received.
Similar to his request to Delegate Henson, Sokolowski emailed a letter to Senator Foy asking her to intervene with Senator Hashmi, who chaired the Senate Health and Education Committee, so that he could brief the Committee on the discriminatory SOL in the 2023 Standards. As Foy never replied to his emails, Sokolowski contacted Senator Hashmi and asked to brief the Senate Education and Health Committee on the falsified Standard in the 2015 Standards and the discriminatory Standard in the 2023 Standards. As no response was received, he followed up with the same request, to which Hashmi replied stating that she would distribute his briefing to the Committee members; however, the Committee would not meet until the start of the 2025 legislative season.
In his subsequent requests to brief the Committee, Hashmi provided the same response. As there were seven months remaining in the legislative year, Sokolowski asked Hashmi to convene the Committee to discuss amending Virginia Code, Title 22.1, Section 208.02 so that paragraph B.1 includes the genocides that occurred concurrent with the Jewish genocide. He also asked that the Committee contact the Virginia Governor and request insertion of his additional Standard into the 2023 Standards, which included Poles and Romani as genocide victims. At this point, Hashmi did not reply further.
Epilogue
As the saying goes, in the age of information, ignorance is a choice.
When unmistakable academic wrongdoing and academic discrimination was formally reported to the state’s educational authorities and top senior executives, their refusal to acknowledge these serious charges and obvious implications was striking to Sokolowski. Further troubling was their ignorance of simple historical facts, which enabled the Advisory Committee to place false and discriminatory Standards of Learning in Virginia’s high-school curriculum.
Sokolowski maintains that the Advisory Committee committed wrongdoing by falsifying two of the 1948 Genocide Convention’s four victim groups of genocide in order to exclude Poles, an ethnic and national group, and Romani, an ethnic group, as genocide victims. The Genocide Convention identified the victim groups as racial, religious, ethnic, and national. By contrast, the Advisory Committee claimed they were racial, religious, cultural, and political. The fallacious Standard, WHII.11d in the 2015 Standards of Learning, thus wrongly conveyed to students and teachers that only Jews were Hitler’s genocide victims.
The Advisory Committee, in its role as an agent of the state, not only violated the integrity of the historical record but also violated the public trust of Virginia’s citizens, who rightly require and justifiably expect a factually accurate account of events.
Six state offices, each of whom ignored Sokolowski’s notifications and refused to investigate, were complicit in the Advisory Committee’s misconduct by allowing the falsified Standard to remain in the curriculum for seven years and further convey the fictitious narrative that only Jews were Hitler’s genocide victims. The six were the Department of Education, Board of Education, Secretary of Education, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Lieutenant Governor, and Governor. It should be noted that Governor Youngkin’s Commission to Combat Antisemitism in Virginia also endorsed the falsified Standard.
Sokolowski also maintains that the Advisory Committee knowingly authored a discriminatory Standard in the 2023 Standards of Learning. Standard WHII.9 excludes the genocide of Poles and Romani, and only includes the genocide of Jews. As a result, Virginia teachers and students will continue to be deceived into concluding that Jews were the only victims against whom Hilter committed genocide. The Advisory Committee’s exclusion of Poles and Romani further violates Code of Virginia, § 22.1-208.02, paragraph B.1, which requires the Committee to “provide standards recommendations that include the historical underpinnings of the Holocaust and other historical genocide”. Hitler’s genocide of Poles and Romani are unmistakably the “other historical genocides” that the Committee purposely chose to ignore.
As in the case of the falsified 2015 Standard, the same six state offices committed gross dereliction of state responsibility by ignoring and refusing to investigate Sokolowski’s notifications about the discriminatory 2023 Standard. Regrettably, they chose to ignore the fact that the state has a legitimate interest in ensuring the integrity of the historical record that is presented to Virginia’s students and teachers. A simple review of the history, which each could have easily done, confirms that Hitler committed genocide against three victim groups. Had they done so, they would have seen that the Advisory Committee has consistently authored Virginia’s Standards of Learning so that Virginia students and teachers are instructed that only one group was victimized. As the Polish Government’s three-volume 2022 War Report shows at https://www.reparations-for-poland.com/, the history is straightforward. Hitler committed genocide against 5.2 million Polish innocent citizens; 2.4 million Poles and 2.8 million Polish Jews. The Polish people view Hitler’s campaign of mass murder as a double holocaust and an inseparable part of Polish history.
The inaction of the six state offices makes each complicit in allowing academic discrimination to remain in Virigina’s high-school curriculum for the next seven years.
As for the Offices of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education and Virginia Attorney General, Sokolowski maintains that he presented the valid legal argument that the 2023 Standards’ exclusion of Poles and Romani as genocide victims was discriminatory. Despite the evident facts, both offices refused to investigate and desperately sought every possible excuse to avoid doing so. The similarly shameful refusal by Virginia’s Inspector General to investigate also constitutes dereliction of state responsibility. The unwillingness of the State Senate and House education committees to remedy the discriminatory Standard is also indefensible.
As another saying goes, the greatest ignorance is rejecting something you know nothing about.
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Gene Sokolowski, PhD, immigrated to the U.S. with his father, a survivor of four German concentration camps. Following his retirement from active duty as a career military officer, he was a systems analyst with Northrup Grumman and a telecommunications specialist with the Federal Government. His three adult children and five of his six grandchildren are products of Virginia’s public schools.
