The incident takes place 80 years to the day after the Nazis arrested the Jewish teenager.
ADVERTISEMENTA statue of Anne Frank in Amsterdam was smeared with blood-red paint, with the slogan « Free Gaza » spray-painted on its base.
The incident takes place 80 years to the day after the Nazis arrested the Jewish teenager and deported her and her family to a Nazi concentration camp.
According to local television station AT5, this is the second time in less than a month that the statue, erected in a park in the capital of the Netherlands, has been targeted.
Klaas Meijer, spokesman for the Netherlands Ministry of Defence, called the vandals « barbarians ».
The monument to the famous Holocaust victim had already been defaced on July 9. The municipality pleaded for reinforced protection with video surveillance and night lighting at the time.
« An investigation has been launched, but no suspects have been identified at present, » a police spokesman told AFP.
The rise in anti-Semitic incidents continues around the world in the wake of the war raging in the Gaza Strip.
At the time of the first vandalism in July, mayor Femke Halsema condemned the defacing, saying: “No Palestinian has been helped by smearing her so precious statue.”
« This young girl, who was so brutally murdered by the Nazis at the age of 15, reminds us and our city every day of humanity and gentleness, in the most difficult circumstances,” Halsema posted on Instagram.
“Whoever it was, shame on you! There is no excuse for this,” she added.
Anne Frank, who died in the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp in 1945, is a symbol for the Dutch Jewish community. Her diary has become one of the most influential accounts of the Holocaust.
Additional sources • AT5, France Info
