Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe NEW YORK, Nov. 1 (UPI) -- A New York high school student was removed from class after he showed up at school on Halloween dressed as Adolf Hitler. Walter Petryk, 16, whose stepfather is a prominent Jewish author, said he was removed from his second-period class at Leon M. Goldstein High School, the New York Post reported Wednesday. Advertisement Petryk refused to remove the costume, which he said was an act of parody protected under his right to free expression. His mother was called to take him home. "I figured somebody would say something eventually but I really do believe that people have a right to express themselves," said Petryk, who told the newspaper he aspires to be a comedy writer. "This is a matter of artistic free expression and a school not being stupid," said Diane Petryk-Bloom, the teen's mother. "(The dean is) offended by a parody of Hitler -- and he's acting like Hitler." "If he had wanted to advocate my genocide, I wouldn't have allowed (the costume)," Petryk's stepfather, Howard Bloom, author of "The Lucifer Principle," told the Post "That wasn't the spirit in which he was doing this at all. He was doing it in the spirit of Monty Python and Mel Brooks." Advertisement
