A photo of two Mercer Island teens making the Nazi salute circulated widely on social media on Tuesday morning, rattling the small city east of Seattle.

In an email sent on Tuesday afternoon, Donna Colosky, superintendent of the Mercer Island school district, and Vicki Puckett, the high school principal, wrote that the images “were not created or shared with malicious intent toward others.”

“Still,” they wrote, “these images are highly offensive and hurtful.”

The image shows the two teens standing in snow, in the park over the I-90 tunnel, which locals call “the lid.”

A quarter of households on Mercer Island are Jewish, and the island is home to the Stroum Jewish Community Center.

The Nazi salute is outlawed in Germany, and it is a crime to use the salute in Poland and Slovakia. In other countries it can be considered hate speech.