Anne Frank's Holocaust surviving stepsister has met with the Nazi beer pongers who gave Hitler salutes and used cups arranged as a swastika at a party.

Eva Schloss, 89, privately visited those who had attended and described an emotional meeting in which she recounted her experiences at the Auschwitz death camp.

When she was freed at 16, Holocaust survivor Eva Schloss was left with only her mother alive. The rest of her family perished.

She said the California students who saluted the swastika at the party last weekend, 'didn't realize what it really meant', adding: 'They just thought it was a joke.'

They are said to have apologized profusely during the meeting, which also included parents, community members and student leaders from Newport Harbor High School.

Eva Schloss, the stepsister of Anne Frank, met California high school students who were photographed giving Nazi salutes around a swastika formed by drinking cups at a party. She is seen above Thursday after speaking to the students

Images circulated of the game which included red cups in the shape of a swastika. Pictures from the Newport Beach party went viral, sparking widespread outrage

Schloss said she hoped there would be more education about the Holocaust and a war now 75 years in the past.

The students 'don't realize what those signs really mean to victims who have gone through this period', she said.

She expressed confidence that the students 'have learned a lesson for life'.

Images seem to show students playing a Nazi-themed version of 'rage cage', a drinking game similar to beer pong.

The game typically involves beer-filled cups arranged into a circle or square in the middle of the table which players bounce a ping-pong ball into.

However, these images show the cups arranged in the shape of a swastika.

In one of the pictures, a dozens students are seen standing around the swastika, with the majority of them throwing a one-armed Nazi salute.

Like Frank (left), the world-famous Jewish diarist who died in the Holocaust, Schloss (right) and her family went into hiding in Amsterdam during World War II but were betrayed

The photos shocked the wealthy seaside enclave known for its beaches and placid streets dotted with palms and sparked widespread condemnation.

Hundreds of people came to a meeting at the school Monday to express outrage.

Alan Ramirez, a 15-year-old sophomore at Newport Harbor, said: 'I thought it was horrible what they did.'

He said he was disappointed because the photo gave the school a bad image, but he did not think any of those involved were actually embracing Nazism or intending to vilify Jewish people. Rather, he said, they were 'caught in the moment, going with the crowd.'

Kathy Mader, a mother of two students who attend Newport Harbor, said: The majority of these kids were blown away by this.'

'I have to hope it was just stupidity.'

Schloss, left, and Rabbi Reuven Mintz leave Newport Harbor High School after the meeting

Joined by Newport Harbor High School Principal Sean Boulton, left, Schloss, talks to reporters

School Principal Sean Boulton declined to discuss the actions of specific students but said 'society as a whole has normalized hate language and hate speech.'

'They got caught up in a larger national issue,' he said.

Like her famous step-sister, Schloss and her family went into hiding in Amsterdam during World War II but were betrayed and were sent to the Auschwitz death camp.

She was eventually liberated by the Russian army in 1945.

Schloss, whose mother married Frank's father, Otto Frank, in 1953, has told her story in talks to schoolchildren and in books including 'Eva's Story: A Survivor's Tale by the Stepsister of Anne Frank.'

Frank was born in Germany and fled to the Netherlands with her family as Adolf Hitler rose to power.

After Germany invaded the Netherlands, her father created a secret living space where she kept her now-famous diary for two years before being discovered. Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at age 15.