Anne Frank Foundation Calls Action a Hate Crime

The mayor of Amsterdam is among those condemning the projection of a debunked Holocaust trope onto the Anne Frank house, calling it "a cowardly and repulsive deed." The text suggested Anne Frank did not write her diary, DutchNews.nl reports. Police are investigating, and Amsterdam's mayor said she hopes the people responsible are caught. "This is an act of uncut anti-Semitism, and an attack against Anne Frank's legacy, our international symbol of the fight against anti-Semitism," Femke Halsema said. "This is painful for the survivors, relatives of the victims of the Holocaust."

The projection said, "Anne Frank, inventor of the ballpoint pen," a reference to false claims that she wrote part of her diary with a type of pen that didn't exist in her lifetime, per the Times of Israel. Video of the projection was shown on a Telegram channel called "Laser Nazi Bunker," in which bystanders appear to be gesturing toward it angrily. An antisemitic song plays in the background during the video. The false claim is based on the discovery of several pages found in Anne Frank's papers in the 1980s that were in ballpoint; those sheets were accidently left behind by a researcher in the 1960s. (More Anne Frank stories.)