An Albany, New York high school English teacher has been put on administrative leave after a questionable writing assignment on the Holocaust left many students disturbed.

The teacher, who remains unnamed, was teaching students about the Holocaust in preparation for their reading of Eli Wiesel's first hand account of concentration camps in his book "Night." Their assignment? To pretend to be Nazi sympathizers.

Specifically, the assignment was to write a persuasive letter to a Nazi government official that would convince anyone reading the letter that "Jews are evil." Students were encouraged by the teacher to use relevant literary tools and to remember that their lives in Nazi Germany depended on a believable letter.

"Your essay must be five paragraphs long, with an introduction, three body paragraphs containing your strongest arguments, and a conclusion," the assignment read. "You do not have a choice in your position: you must argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your loyalty to the Third Reich!"

Many student reported being uncomfortable with the assignment, and several refused to participate.

District Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard held a news conference Friday to formally apologize for the assignment. She claimed that she did not believe the teacher had malicious, intent, but also chastised the guilty party for a poor decision.

"Obviously, we have a severe lack of judgment and a horrible level of insensitivity," said Wyngaard. "That's not the assignment that any school district, and certainly not mine, is going to tolerate."

Moses Nagel, a Jewish father of one of the children given the assignment, agrees with Wyngaard's assessment but does not believe the teacher should be punished very too harshly for his decisions.

"It just seems like there's a million other examples to use rather than going there," he said.