‘A swastika is not a joke’: Protesters voice outrage over O.C. Nazi party, call for unity
Some carried signs reading “A swastika is not a joke” and “Let’s make the world a better place.” Others wore stickers with the slogan “No place for hate.”
On Friday evening, more than 100 people gathered in Costa Mesa’s TeWinkle Park to show solidarity with Orange County’s Jewish community after photographs posted on social media this week showing a group of local high school students in Nazi salute around a makeshift swastika went viral.
The gathering was the latest response to the photos taken at an off-campus party last Saturday night in Costa Mesa that students and school officials have said included teenagers from Newport Harbor, Costa Mesa and Estancia high schools. Among the groups participating in Friday’s event were March for our Lives OC, Orange County Equality Coalition, the Anti-Defamation League of Orange County/Long Beach, and Human Rights Campaign of Orange County/Long Beach/Palm Springs.
The event also included a Jewish Shabbat service and a vigil illuminated by electric candlelights.
On Thursday night, Corona del Mar High School held a public forum on anti-Semitism and its origins. A similar meeting took place on Monday at Newport Harbor High.
Also on Thursday, Eva Schloss — stepsister and childhood friend of Holocaust diarist Anne Frank — met with about 55 Newport Harbor students, staff members and parents to discuss her incarceration as a teenager at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and speak firsthand about the horrors Nazi Germany inflicted on millions of Jews and others during WWII.
Newport-Mesa Unified School district officials have said they are investigating the incident and want to talk to all of those involved to determine appropriate disciplinary action.
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