The stepsister of Anne Frank will be meeting with teens who were photographed making Nazi salutes and posing alongside a swastika made of red plastic cups this week.
Eva Schloss, who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, is scheduled to meet with the high school students on Thursday. The anti-semitic photos from the party were originally posted on Snapchat with the caption “master race” and “German rage cage.”
Other comments made during a Snapchat conversation among the teenage party goers include “Yaaa no, phone gonna die. Just like the Jews.”
The teens who attended the party on Saturday, March 2 were students who attended high schools at Newport Harbor, Costa Mesa, and Estancia, theLos Angeles Timesreported.
Newport-Mesa Unified School District said it is investigating the photos and interviewed more than two dozen students as of yet.
“While these actions did not occur on any school campus or school function, we condemn all acts of anti-Semitism and hate in all their forms,” Fred Navarro, superintendent of Newport-Mesa, said in a statement.
In response to the backlash from the viral photos, several students involved wrote apologies condemning their own behaviour as “disgusting,” “appalling,” and “irresponsible.”
Ms Schloss is optimistic about meeting the students. She believes the meeting could become a learning experience for the teens. According to a statement from the Chabad Centre for Jewish Life, the 89-year-old Holocaust survivor said, the students could become “advocates of tolerance and understanding” despite their inappropriate actions.
The Austrian-born memoirist was captured by the Nazis when she was 15-years-old after spending two years hiding in the Netherlands.
"It’s imperative that today’s young people come face to face with the consequences of unchecked hatred," Rabbi Reuven Mintz, the centre’s director, said in a statement.
"Our hope is that meeting someone who witnessed firsthand the atrocities committed under that same swastika and salute will help guide these students towards a life of tolerance and acceptance, spreading a message of inclusion and love, rather than one of hatred.”
