Doomed Parkland Student Answered This Holocaust History Question — Right Before Shooting Started
Image by Ilene Prusher and Nikki Casey
In Room 1214 of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Ivy Schamis had divided up her class on the history of the Holocaust into small groups to make presentations for the group on February 14.
Moments before the gunfire began, she turned to them and asked, “Does anyone know who Adi Dassler is?”
Nicholas Dworet, 17, raised his hand, according to a moving account of the class in the New York Times.
“He is the founder of Adidas and his brother made Pumas,” he said, Shamis told the paper.
In the four years Schamis had taught the class, no one had ever known the answer, she told the Times. Dassler, whose shoes were worn by Jesse Owens, was one of the names she would introduce to students before lecturing on the 1936 Olympics, held in Berlin.
“I asked him, how did he know that? I was just so excited because he knew that answer. And that is when the first shots rang out,” she said.
Dworet was killed in the gunfire.
“I later told his mother that he was my star student that day,” she said.
Contact Alyssa Fisher at fisher@forward.com or on Twitter, @alyssalfisher
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