NEO-NAZIS ATTACK ANNE FRANK

Statue in memory of Anne Frank vandalized in Boise, Idaho

22 May 2007

Vandals have toppled and damaged a statue of Holocaust victim Anne Frank in Boise, the capital of the US state of Idaho. The incident comes only two months after the same memorial was plastered with neo-Nazi stickers. Damage included a broken finger and scrapes on the head of the statue. In March, the five-year-old memorial was covered with swastika stickers promoting the neo-Nazi group Combat 18, and identical stickers were attached to the Islamic Center of Boise. Combat 18 is a loosely organized group that is believed to have originated in Britain. No-one was ever arrested over that attack.

The life-sized memorial depicts Anne Frank standing on a chair. Vandals uprooted the chair, sending the entire sculpture crashing to the ground. Amy Herzfeld, director of the Idaho Human Rights Education Center, told the AP press agency that it was unclear whether the latest damage was ideologically motivated. "Whether or not it was anti-Semitic, it was certainly a destructive and hurtful act," she was quoted as saying.

Anne Frank’s diary about her hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam during World War II made her world-famous. She died in the Nazi camp Bergen-Belsen in March 1945.