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Dutch police stated on Friday they have been investigating the projection of an anti-Semitic laser message onto the Anne Frank Home in Amsterdam — an incident the prime minister condemned as "reprehensible".
The message referenced a far-right conspiracy idea that the teenage Holocaust sufferer was not the writer of her well-known diary, and pictures of the projection have been proven on a personal US Telegram channel.
"It happened this week. We were notified and we are investigating it," an Amsterdam police spokesman instructed AFP, declining to present additional particulars.
The Anne Frank Home Museum, which preserves the canalside home the place the Jewish Frank household hid from the Nazis throughout World Battle II, expressed its "shock and revulsion".
The museum, which receives round one million guests a yr, instructed AFP it had "reported the incident to the police" and was in touch with town council and public prosecutors.
It stated the projected message learn "Ann Frank, inventor of the ballpoint pen" — referring to false claims that the diary was partly written with a sort of pen that solely got here into use after the warfare.
"With the projection and the (online) video, the perpetrators are attacking the authenticity of Anne Frank's diary and inciting hatred. It is an anti-Semitic and racist film," the museum stated.
The museum stated it came upon the message had been projected onto its exterior for a number of minutes on Monday night after the footage appeared in a "hate video" on Telegram.
An anti-Semitic track performs within the background of the video, stated Dutch newspaper Het Parool, which first reported the incident.
The declare relies on the invention of a number of sheets in ballpoint discovered amongst Anne Frank's papers within the Eighties, however which have been in actual fact left there by chance by a researcher within the Nineteen Sixties, Dutch media stated.
'Reprehensible'
Prime Minister Mark Rutte condemned the "reprehensible" act.
"There is no place for anti-Semitism in our country; we can never and should never accept this," Rutte tweeted.
The incident confirmed the necessity for legal guidelines criminalising Holocaust denial within the Netherlands, Justice Minister Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius added.
Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema condemned the incident as "pure anti-Semitism".
Anne Frank and her household hid for 2 years in a secret annex to the canalside home after the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands throughout World Battle II, however have been captured in a raid in 1944.
{The teenager} and her sister died within the Bergen-Belsen focus camp in 1945.
Her diary, discovered by her father Otto, grew to become some of the haunting accounts of the Holocaust, promoting some 30 million copies.
However the Netherlands remains to be coming to phrases with its position within the wartime persecution of Jews.
There at the moment are issues a few resurgence of far-right and anti-Semitic viewpoints.
A current survey revealed that almost 1 / 4 of Dutch adults below 40 believed the Holocaust was a fantasy or that the variety of deaths was exaggerated.
In January, Dutch police stated they have been investigating the projection of racist slogans on Rotterdam's Erasmus Bridge throughout New 12 months's festivities.
(AFP)
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