SOUTHLAKE, Texas —

In a secret recording, a Texas school administrator advised teachers to have an "opposing" book regarding the Holocaust – the genocide of millions of European Jews during World War II.

The school leader works with the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, near Dallas-Fort Worth. According to audio obtained by NBC News, Gina Peddy, the Carroll school district's executive director of curriculum and instruction, made the comment during a training session on which books teachers can have in classroom libraries.

Carroll ISD held the training camp to respond to a parent's complaint of how the board reprimands a fourth-grade teacher who had kept an anti-racism book in her classroom. A Carroll staff member secretly recorded the training and shared the audio with NBC News.

In the recording, Peddy told the teachers to remember the concept of House Bill 3979, which is a new Texas law that requires teachers to present multiple perspectives when discussing "widely debated and currently controversial" issues.

"Make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives," Peddy said.

One teacher asked Peddy how someone could not oppose the Holocaust, to which Peddy responded, "Believe me. That's come up."

In a statement from the district, Carroll ISD said the district is trying to help teachers comply with the new state law and an updated version that will go into effect in December.

According to NBC News, teachers in the Carroll school district say they fear being punished for stocking classrooms with books dealing with racism, slavery and now the Holocaust. Six teachers spoke with NBC, saying district leaders have sent mixed messages about which books are appropriate in classrooms and what actions they should be taking.

Earlier this week, Texas' Katy Independent School District decided to pull books from award-winning author Jerry Craft, including "New Kid," from its shelves over allegations the content of the work promoted critical race theory and Marxism.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Students at a school near West Palm Beach heard a first-hand account from a Holocaust survivor on Friday.

Manny Gurowski, 90, spoke at Oxbridge Academy and shared his story of survival.

Gurowski discussed how he hid in basements, traded soap for bread to care for his sick sister, and came to America with just $5 in his pocket.

"Most of the people got shot, and I'm the lucky one that survived," Gurowski said.

Gurowski said his life in Germany started to change around 1937. That's when on the first day of school in Germany, he was told by his teacher to leave and never come back because he was Jewish.

After that occurrence, he said things got worse, and his family was taken to a labor camp to make ammunition for the German army.

WPTV

"It became very common to see bodies all over the place. They were stacked like cordwood," Gurowski said of his years at the camp at what is now Kaliningrad, Russia.

He and his fellow prisoners were subjected to inhumane conditions.

"A life didn't mean anything, nothing, even in this labor ghetto. Every morning when you line up, the Germans are famous for counting, and you stand there for hours, and people would collapse right next to you, and they just kick, and they're done or a bullet in the head," Gurowski said.

He and his family survived the atrocities and were eventually freed by the Russian Army, later emigrating to the U.S.

South Florida has many Holocaust survivors, and as they grow older, there is a push to preserve their stories.

"I believe someone looked over my shoulder," Gurowski said. "I think that’s what pulled me through."

AP Photo/CAF pap, file

On Friday, students at Oxbridge also experienced a virtual tour of the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps, where the death toll included almost one million Jews.

Gurowski's visit to the school is part of Oxbridge Academy's summer reading program, including books that addressed the Holocaust.

He said he enjoys telling his story to a new generation and preserving the memory of what happened.

"I want them to know how lucky they are," Gurowski said.

Friday's presentation at Oxbridge Academy was arranged by the Jewish Student Union and Southern NCSY.

Matt Sczesny and Scott Sutton at WPTV first reported this story.

WASHINGTON —

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene apologized Monday for affronting people with recent comments comparing the required wearing of safety masks in the House to the horrors of the Holocaust.

"I'm truly sorry for offending people with remarks about the Holocaust," the Georgia Republican told reporters outside the Capitol, saying she had visited Washington's U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum earlier in the day. "There's no comparison and there never ever will be."

Greene's comments were a rare expression of regret by the conservative agitator, a freshman whose career has included the embrace of violent and offensive conspiracy theories and angry confrontations with progressive colleagues.

Her apology came more than three weeks after appearing on a conservative podcast and comparing COVID-19 safety requirements adopted by Democrats controlling the House to "a time and history where people were told to wear a gold star." She said they were "put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany. This is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about."

Her comments were condemned by Republican leaders, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who called the comparison "appalling."

GOP leaders have often been reluctant to castigate Greene, a close ally of former President Donald Trump. After social media posts were unearthed in which Greene suggested support for executing some Democratic leaders, McCarthy and most Republicans stood by her when the House took the unusual step of stripping her of her committee assignments in February.

But as House members returned to the Capitol on Monday after a three-week break, Greene was contrite.

"Anti-Semitism is true hate," she said. "And I saw that today at the Holocaust Museum."

In 2018, two years before her election to Congress, she speculated on Facebook that California wildfires may have been caused by "lasers or blue beams of light" controlled by a left-wing cabal tied to a powerful Jewish family.

On Monday, she told reporters that when she was 19, she visited the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. "It isn't like I learned about it today," she said of the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews and huge numbers of other people were killed. "I went today because I thought it was important," she said, and wanted to talk about it as she apologized.

House leaders have recently said vaccinated people no longer must wear masks in the chamber.