A Game of ‘Jews v. Nazis’ Beer Pong Riles Princeton High — and the ADL
Image by Snapchat
A group of high school students in Princeton, N.J. are in hot water after they were caught playing beer pong with a “Jews v. Nazis” theme.
Even worse, they posted photos of their twisted drinking game on social media.
Now, locals are debating whether it was all in fun as the Anti-Defamation League calls for more intensive teaching of the horrors of the Third Reich and the Holocaust.
The photos were first posted by a fellow classmate, Jamaica Ponder, after she found them on Snapchat, a social media app. Some of the teens playing the game were Jewish, said Ponder.
The story has caught fire locally after the pix were subsequently posted on the Planet Princeton blog.
The “game” is played the same way as regular beer pong, except the cups are arranged as a swastika and Star of David.
Image by Google Earth
Other rules include the “Anne Frank” move, in which the Jewish team can hide one of their cups, and the “Auschwitz” move in which the Nazi team can make one of their opponents sit out for a period of time.
According to Planet Princeton, parents and students at the school have identified students in the photo as athletes and peer leaders.
Drinking games such as beer pong are common on the weekends for students in the area, officials said, and the Nazi-themed one has, alarmingly, only increased in popularity in the past three years, the ADL reports.
Ponder, a junior at Princeton High School who was not at the party, posted on her blog about the incident and expressed shame and disgust for the actions of her classmates.
“I’m not even Jewish and I’m still offended. This type of behavior makes me believe that this group of guys would readily play ‘pin the noose on the n*****,’ just as readily as they incorporated an ‘Anne Frank’ cup in their noxious little game of pong. Yes, that happened. No, you can’t just make this stuff up,” she wrote.
She also wrote that many of her fellow students saw the post on Snapchat, but she is the only one speaking out about the incident. “I am unsure as to what’s worse: the static silence from my peers, or the fact that this happened in the first place,” she wrote.
Ponder says she has received a large response to her blog post. On Facebook, there are over 200 comments from students and alumni.
What surprised her the most, she wrote, was the negative response from Princeton High School students. They are defending the students in the picture and saying that she is tarnishing their reputation.
“People are willing to distort their values to protect these people just because of what they stand for,” she said. “They stand for athletics, and being cool, and going to good schools. That to me, above all else, is whats most disturbing.”
Joshua Cohen, Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League, said he is not surprised — but worried.
“We’re concerned about this incident and the allegations that Princeton High School students might have been involved in this. I think that the images that are online are both alarming and outrageous,” he told The Forward.
“I think an incident like this underscores and highlights a number of different issues. One, the trivialization of Nazis, Hitler and anti-semitism by teenagers. I think it underscores the critical need for holocaust education.”
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