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The principal of a Massachusetts high school wrote a letter apologizing for the publication of a quote generally attributed to Nazi leaders in the school’s yearbook.

Hundreds of copies of the yearbook had been printed and distributed to students at Andover High School in Massachusetts before the school became aware that a senior captioned his photo with a quote associated with Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler, the New York Times reported. It stopped selling the yearbook, and now the school is now offering to replace the page or cover the quote up with a sticker.

“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,” principal Philip Conrad wrote in the letter. “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.”

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The quote reads, “Make the lie big, keep it simple, keep saying it and eventually they will believe it,” which is widely associated with Hitler and Goebbels’s use of propaganda to build the Nazi empire. It is not attributed in the yearbook and appears underneath the photo of the student, who has not been named.

“He used it without any knowledge of where it came from or the hateful background with which it is associated,” Mr. Conrad said of the student. He declined to comment Friday on what the student was intending to convey.

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

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