By Ben Sales/(JTA) – “The Sound of Music” is about a singing family that defies the Nazi takeover of Austria. But Lisa Mars of LaGuardia High, the prominent performing arts school made legendary in the musical “Fame,” reportedly ordered the props removed, though the NYC Department of Education later told the New York Daily News  that the symbols would still appear in two scenes. The Third Reich symbols appear in the play in the context of the family von Trapp opposing the Nazis. LaGuardia students designed the set. “This is a very liberal school, we’re all against Nazis,” one sophomore performer told the Daily News. “But to take out the symbol is to try to erase history. … “Obviously the symbols are offensive. But in context, they are supposed to be.”

A portion of the show’s profits will be donated to Holocaust remembrance groups, and audience members will receive a pamphlet insert reading, in part, “When we say ‘never again’ will those atrocities of war be repeated, NEVER AGAIN must be a promise kept.”

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