AMSTERDAM (JTA) — For a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor and friend of the renowned teenage diarist Anne Frank, laying the first brick for a new monument to victims of the genocide was a “special moment.” “I’m satisfied that it’s finally happening,” Jacqueline van Maarsen told the ANP news agency on… Read more »
Tagged anne frank
Dutch rapper drops Anne Frank stage name following outcry over anti-Semitism
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — The Dutch rapper who went by Anne Frank said Wednesday that she will change the name following an outcry and the revelation of past anti-Semitic statements. The 25-year-old performer, whose real name may be Anne van der Does, according to the GeenStijl website, said she was shortening… Read more »
Hundreds mark 90th birthday of Anne Frank in her birth city of Frankfurt
(JTA) — Several hundred people gathered at a church in Frankfurt, the city of Anne Frank’s birth, on the occasion of the teenage diarist’s 90th birthday. The event, organized Wednesday at the iconic St. Paul’s Church by the municipality of the German city and the Basel-based Anne Frank Foundation,… Read more »
An employee at the Anne Frank House asked to wear a kippah. He waited 6 months for an answer.

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — When Barry Vingerling asked his employers at the Anne Frank House whether it was okay for him to start coming to work wearing a kippah, he did it mostly as a courtesy. “I hadn’t expected this to be an issue,” Vingerling, 25, told the Dutch-Jewish NIW… Read more »
Eva Schloss, playmate of Anne Frank, shares story of survival

One of 10 films on the March 4 Academy Awards shortlist for best short documentary is “116 Cameras.” It is a behind-the-scenes look at how filmmakers preserve Holocaust survivors’ memories in testimony. Featuring Eva Schloss, it uses “New Dimensions in Testimony” technology and interactive, 3-D, holographic imagery. It wasn’t… Read more »
How these teachers learned to teach the Holocaust

NEW YORK (JTA) — When Megan Corbin was in school, she learned about the Holocaust as an optimistic story. Her grade school, she said, “highlighted Anne Frank as the voice of hope, and that really wasn’t the reality.” Now, as an eighth-grade language arts teacher outside of Seattle, she… Read more »
Who is Anne Frank? The answers kindle a debate in her native Holland

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Decades after her death at a Nazi concentration camp, Anne Frank’s restless spirit in heaven finally finds a soulmate in Zef Bunga, an Albanian teenager who was murdered in a revenge killing. Anne, whose world-famous diary recounts her two years in hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam with… Read more »
Anne Frank’s final days, as told by her former classmate

(JTA) — Looking through the barbed wire of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 14-year-old Nanette Konig could barely recognize her friend and classmate from Amsterdam, Anne Frank. Both girls had been caught by the Nazis in the Dutch capital and were sent to starve to death in a place Konig… Read more »
Dutch survivor’s diary called an Anne Frank story with a ‘happy’ ending

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — A Holocaust survivor dubbed “Rotterdam’s Anne Frank” in her native Netherlands published her wartime diary, which she wrote while hiding in the bombed-out city. “At Night I Dream of Peace,” the Dutch-language diary of 89-year-old Carry Ulreich, hit bookstores in the Netherlands last week. The book generated strong… Read more »
In Japan, the Holocaust provides a lesson in dangers of nationalism

FUKUYAMA, Japan (JTA) — In the auditorium of this country’s main Holocaust education center, a teenage actor explains the dilemma that faced a Japanese diplomat during World War II. “My conscience tells me I must act a certain way, but doing so means defying my commanders,” says the actor… Read more »
Imagining if Anne Frank had lived to tell her story
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — At a Paris café after the war, a young publisher is quickly falling in love with an adorable Jewish author he just met as she discusses her still-unpublished book. It is an intensely private account based on a personal diary that recounts her amazing survival of… Read more »
At new Anne Frank theater in Amsterdam, tragedy and fancy dinners

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — To millions worldwide, she is a symbol of heroism and a haunting reminder of the dangers of discrimination. But for one Dutch entertainment firm, Anne Frank is a brand name powerful enough to merit millions of dollars of investment. Last week, the Amsterdam-based production company Imagine… Read more »
Behind Japanese fascination with Anne Frank, a ‘kinship of victims’

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — She speaks only Japanese and is not entirely sure what country she’s in, but 18-year-old Haruna Matsui is happy to stand in the rain for an hour with two friends to see the home of a person she has never met yet nonetheless considers her soul… Read more »
Shadowy figure of Anne Frank’s sister inspiration for Tucsonan’s new novel

Tucson author Jillian Cantor’s spare, elegant new novel, “Margot,” begins with a startling premise: What if Anne Frank’s sister had survived the Holocaust and was living under an assumed name in Philadelphia? Cantor, 35, says the first time she read “The Diary of a Young Girl” at age 13,… Read more »
On 18th anniversary, Anne Frank-inspired Message of Hope Fund endowed

“We will never forget.” These words have become a staple for Jewish people around the globe. On the surface, they remind us of the millions of innocent lives lost in a world of blind hatred, blatant egotism and unimaginable fear, in the hope that such horrendous acts never happen… Read more »
Committing to memory with author Nathan Englander

NEW YORK (JTA) — Author Nathan Englander recently received the 2012 Frank O’Conner International Short Story Award for his latest collection, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank.” He spoke with JTA about the impact of his Jewish education, the challenges of translation and why he’s… Read more »
Is wax Anne Frank at Madame Tussauds exploitation?

Is the image of Anne Frank heading in the same commercial direction as Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”? Munch’s Expressionist painting, once an iconic representation of horror, for years has been available as a party inflatable, an action figure mask, even a bobblehead. With the installation of a lifelike wax… Read more »
In Jewish Newspapers: Hurricane hero, Jewish California cuisine, Frank tree’s diaspora
HURRICANE HERO: The New York Jewish Week remembers David Reichenberg, a 50-year-old father of four from Spring Valley, N.Y., who died after being electrocuted while saving a boy and his father from a powerline downed by Hurricane Irene. “He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t think about the risk. He just… Read more »
In new play, Patinkin tackles an Anne Frank obsession

BERKELEY, Calif. (JTA) — Mandy Patinkin says he only plays Jewish characters. Che Guevara, his Tony Award-winning role in the 1980 Broadway play, “Evita”? Jewish. Inigo “prepare to die” Montoya in “The Princess Bride”? Also Jewish. “Everything I do is Jewish. It’s who I am. It’s my soul,” said… Read more »