Suicide Prevention Hotline’s Phone Number Is A Pro-Hitler Code, War Vet Claims
Image by elfinima/iStock
(JTA) — A New York man wants the Federal Communications Commission to choose a different three-digit number to reach the national suicide prevention hotline because the proposed number glorifies Hitler.
The proposed number is 988. The digits 88 are often used by neo-Nazis to refer to the phrase “Heil Hitler.” H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.
Charles Greinsky, a Jewish war veteran who lives in Staten Island, New York, is lobbying his congressman, Democratic Rep. Max Rose, and New York Sen. Charles Schumer to come up with and push through a different number, the New York Post reported.
“You’d have Holocaust survivors and children of Holocaust survivors that are in need of mental health services dialing a number that causes extreme stress and makes people relive some of the worst experiences the world has ever seen,” he told the Post.
He said his synagogue was graffitied with the number 88 in 2008.
The Federal Communications Commission recommended simplifying the hotline’s current 10-digit number in a report it released last week in the wake of federal legislation passed last year that called for improvements to the national suicide prevention and mental health crisis hotline system.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
