Dutch PM says message displayed on Anne Frank House is ‘reprehensible’
The message projected by laser onto the Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam this week suggested Frank’s diary was a forgery or that she had not written it.
10 February 2023 - 16:46
by Toby Sterling
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Amsterdam — The Netherlands’ Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Friday described as “reprehensible” a message projected by laser onto the Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam this week suggesting Frank’s diary was a forgery or that she had not written it.
Amsterdam police said they were investigating the incident, which took place on Monday evening.
The words projected onto the building referred to Frank as “the inventor of the ballpoint pen,” a reference to debunked conspiracy theories about her diary.
Frank, who was Jewish, wrote her diary from July 1942 to August 1944 while in hiding with her family in a cramped secret space above a canal-side warehouse. The museum where the message was projected is now located at the spot.
“There is no place for anti-Semitism in our country, we can never accept this,” Rutte said in a statement.
The Anne Frank House said in a statement that images of the incident were circulating on right-wing chat groups and it had referred the matter to police and prosecutors.
Frank and her family was captured by Nazis and she died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, aged 15. Her diary is one of the most important documents to have emerged from the Holocaust.
Support our award-winning journalism. The Premium package (digital only) is R30 for the first month and thereafter you pay R129 p/m now ad-free for all subscribers.
Dutch PM says message displayed on Anne Frank House is ‘reprehensible’
The message projected by laser onto the Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam this week suggested Frank’s diary was a forgery or that she had not written it.
Amsterdam — The Netherlands’ Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Friday described as “reprehensible” a message projected by laser onto the Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam this week suggesting Frank’s diary was a forgery or that she had not written it.
Amsterdam police said they were investigating the incident, which took place on Monday evening.
The words projected onto the building referred to Frank as “the inventor of the ballpoint pen,” a reference to debunked conspiracy theories about her diary.
Frank, who was Jewish, wrote her diary from July 1942 to August 1944 while in hiding with her family in a cramped secret space above a canal-side warehouse. The museum where the message was projected is now located at the spot.
“There is no place for anti-Semitism in our country, we can never accept this,” Rutte said in a statement.
The Anne Frank House said in a statement that images of the incident were circulating on right-wing chat groups and it had referred the matter to police and prosecutors.
Frank and her family was captured by Nazis and she died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, aged 15. Her diary is one of the most important documents to have emerged from the Holocaust.
Reuters
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