Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Holocaust Lesson Teacher Took Wrong Medication

A South Carolina teacher arrested on charges of assault and battery for a Holocaust lesson that went awry may have been under the influence of a medication at the time.

Patricia Mulholland, a veteran seventh-grade social studies teacher at Bluffton Middle School, reportedly told police that she may have accidentally taken some of her husband’s medication on the day of the incident, according to a report released Wednesday by the Bluffton Police Department.

She also was taking medication and mixed up the two, the Hilton Head Island Packet reported.

Mulholland was arrested Monday morning after being accused of dragging a student from his seat by his collar and pushing him under a table while shouting “this is what the Nazis do to Jews.” She was later released from the Beaufort County Detention Center. The incident occurred last week.

Police have copies of cell-phone videos made by some students of the teacher acting strangely before the alleged assault, according to the Savannah Morning News

Mulholland, who has been teaching in the district for 23 years, was placed on administrative leave with pay on April 26. The school district has launched an internal review.

It has not been reported whether or not the student is Jewish.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.