Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary and former communications director for Donald Trump is under some heat for several comments he made in an interview yesterday. When talking about Russia’s alliance with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and his chemical weapon use, Spicer broke a rule known by everyone in the media business– never, ever, ever, compare anybody to Adolf Hitler. He said that Hitler “didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.”

Most people who have studied World War 2 in school know that Hitler did in fact use chemical weapons. He used gas chambers to kill millions and millions of people. This raises a concern– how many students actually learn about the world wars in school?

I asked several of my peers if they know if Hitler used chemical weapons. Simone Chavez, freshman, said that she knew Hitler used chemical weapons and gas chambers in specific to kill millions of people. Ava Gentry, freshman, knew he used gas, but not if that was considered a chemical weapon or how the gas was used. John Perkins agreed, by saying he was pretty sure he used them but not what kind. Lydia Bayah and Meiven Yang, both freshman, were two of four students I asked that knew that Hitler used chemical weapons and gas chambers.

Along with them was Karly Makay, freshman, who said, “To my knowledge, he used gassing chambers which is a kind of controlled weapon.”

Kharizia Ramos, freshman, said she wasn’t sure what kind of weapons Hitler used.

Clearly, many students know that Hitler used chemical weapons but not which kinds or how many they killed. It’s important that we make sure that teachers are teaching these important things in schools so we don’t make mistakes like Spicer.

Going back to Spicer’s comment, a reporter asked him to clarify what he meant when he said chemical weapons were not used by Hitler.

He said several sentences before saying, “But in the way Assad used them, where he went into towns and dropped them down to innocents in the middle of towns.”

Obviously this comment has been taken a different way than he implied it to be. But nonetheless, it implies that the people killed in the Holocaust were not innocent. Digging himself in an even deeper hole, he called concentration camps “Holocaust centers.”

Now many public figures are calling on President Trump to fire Spicer for offending millions of people by denying that millions were killed in gas chambers by Hitler, and one of the many calling on him is the Anne Frank Memorial Center.

“On Passover no less, Sean Spicer has engaged in Holocaust denial, the most offensive form of fake news imaginable, by denying Hitler gassed millions of Jews to death,” Steven Goldstein said in a statement.

This is why it is important that students take history in schools and read books about the past in English. Spicer’s mistake will follow him for the rest of his life and we don’t want anybody from Desert Vista to suffer the same consequences.