Holocaust Pong: New Jersey students caught playing ‘Jews vs. Nazis’ drinking game

A group of New Jersey high school students is in hot water with their school and the public after a photograph of them playing a drinking game revolving around the Holocaust surfaced online.

The photograph was originally shared on Snapchat, but Princeton High School student Jamaica Ponder, 17, snagged the image of her fellow schoolmates before it disappeared and posted it online alongside a blog post about the game.

The photo itself shows multiple male students engaged in a game that wraps beer pong in World War II trappings and sets up a scenario of Jews versus Nazis. The team representing Jews creates a formation of cups shaped like the Star of David, while the Nazi team creates a swastika.

According to the website Drinking Game Zone, the game requires 60 cups of beer and allows each team special “abilities” based on who they represent. The Nazi team can go on a “blitzkrieg” and shoot ping pong balls into the cups until they miss, or they can even send a player on the Jewish team to “Auschwitz,” eliminating them from play until all other team members sink a ball into a cup.

For the Jewish side, they can take advantage of an “Anne Frank” cup and hide it anywhere in the room.

“Well, perhaps it is a joke,” wrote Ponder on her blog. “But then I guess the punchline would be: genocide. Pardon me if I don’t find that to be hilarious. The real joke here is that these kids weren’t only insensitive enough to play the game, but also silly enough to post it on Snapchat and leave it there long enough for me, and several others, to take a screenshot.”

The image has gotten the attention of not only the internet, but also the school, which is looking into the situation and speaking with the parents of the students involved.

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"As an individual and as the superintendent of the Princeton Public Schools, I am deeply upset that some of our students chose to engage in a drinking game with clearly anti-Semitic overtones and to broadcast their behavior over social media," said Princeton schools Superintendent Steve Cochrane in a statement to NJ.com.

"Underage drinking is not a new problem; nor is the misuse of social media; nor are actions of bias or bigotry," he added. "They are not new problems, but they do not have to be ongoing ones."

While Ponder herself did not identify the students in her blog, she told NJ.com that they are her classmates. She called them “prominent individuals that everybody knows, captains of sports teams.”

At school, Ponder has faced different reactions from students. Some used profanities against her while others appreciated her post, she added.

"I know I'm not the only one who saw this Snapchat story," Ponder wrote on her blog. "Yet here I am, the only one saying anything about it. I am unsure as to what's worse: the static silence from my peers, or the fact that this happened in the first place."