School Board Members in Newport Beach are expected to ask district staffers to create a task force to combat anti-Semitic incidents.The Human Relations Task Force would be charged with developing an action plan for the entire Newport-Mesa Unified School District in hopes of creating a more positive and inclusive school environment.
This is in response to not only the Nazi salute photos seen online but also this week's anti-Semitic vandalism incident at Newport Harbor High.
An Orange County high school, whose students were seen in photos giving Nazi salutes around cups shaped like swastikas, has been vandalized with Nazi symbols.
A Newport Harbor High official says about 10 posters with Nazi markings were put up on campus walls over the weekend and that they were immediately taken down.
One parent tells CBS 2 she finds it suspicious in light the viral photos that received national attention last week:
Organizers of the meeting at Newport Harbor High School aimed to make it a teachable moment.
"It's imperative that today's young people come face to face with the consequences of unchecked hatred," said Rabbi Reuven Mintz of the Chabad Center for Jewish Life in Newport Beach, who played a role in organizing the meeting.
"Our hope is that meeting someone who witnessed firsthand the atrocities committed under that same swastika and salute will help guide these students toward a life of tolerance and acceptance, spreading a message of inclusion and love, rather than one of hatred," Mintz said.
The meeting with the 89-year-old Schloss, a Holocaust survivor herself who wrote about her experiences in her book "After Auschwitz: A story of Heartbreak and Survival," will be private, organizers say.
It comes less than a week after a photo of the students saluting like Nazis around red plastic cubs arranged in a swastika formation during a game of beer pong touched off a firestorm of criticism after being posted on social media.
Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, has joined a chorus of public officials criticizing the anti-Semitic photo.
"As we await a fuller account of what happened at an off-campus, high school party with students reportedly from the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, where cups were formed into a swastika surrounded by students engaged in a Nazi salute, I want to express my condemnation of any and all anti-Semitic acts, and again emphasize my solidarity with the Jewish community in Orange County and elsewhere," Moorlach said.
"This is a personal matter for me," he added. "My folks, ages 91 and 88, suffered in their teenage years as the Nazi blitzkrieg conquered our native Holland in 1940. In 1944-45, they and all Dutch people suffered as the Nazis, their evil nearing defeat, imposed a famine in Holland just before it was liberated by the Allies. My wife is also of partial Jewish ancestry.
"I also have long worked with local Jewish friends and groups to promote tolerance and fight hate. This also sparked in me an interest in California Jewish history, of which numerous volumes now are in my personal library."
Moorlach said he supports "a response that seeks to educate these students on the real evils of Nazism and the Holocaust is an appropriate resolution to what was likely a poor and ill-informed high school gag."