Vandalism at Anne Frank Statue in Amsterdam: 'Gaza' Graffiti Found

A statue of Anne Frank in Amsterdam was defaced Tuesday with the word “Gaza” painted in red on its base. The statue is located in a public park near the famous annex where Frank and her family hid from the Nazis before being discovered.

Mayor Femke Halsema condemned the graffiti, and police have launched an investigation. “How can you bring yourself to do such violence to her memory?” Halsema wrote on social media. “Whoever it was, shame on you! There is no excuse for this. No Palestinian is helped by defacing her precious image.”

The vandalism is the latest in a troubling trend of pro-Palestinian activists associating the war in Gaza with the Holocaust. The Amsterdam statue is not the first Holocaust or Anne Frank memorial in Europe to be defaced since Oct. 7.

In November, a pro-Israel Anne Frank mural in Milan, Italy, depicting the Jewish Holocaust victim holding an Israeli flag, was defaced with graffiti reading “Gaza Free.” Around the same time, a Holocaust memorial boulder in Copenhagen, Denmark, was vandalized with graffiti, and a nearby amphitheater was painted with the Palestinian flag and the words “Free Gaza.”

This troubling pattern has also emerged in the United States. Earlier this month, the phrase “Genocide in Gaza” was written in pen on Seattle’s Holocaust museum. Although police determined the act was not a hate crime, it reflects a growing trend of conflating the Gaza conflict with Holocaust atrocities.

Many pro-Palestinian activists have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, a charge that Israel and its supporters vehemently deny. Recently, the University of Minnesota hired a scholar who accused Israel of genocide to direct its Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, before rescinding the offer amid backlash.

These incidents underscore the disturbing exploitation of Holocaust symbols and memories in current geopolitical conflicts. The defacement of Anne Frank’s statue in Amsterdam is a stark reminder of the need to protect the sanctity of Holocaust memorials and to address the rising tide of antisemitism.

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