February 24, 2014

Anne Frank books vandalized in Tokyo

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Hundreds of Anne Frank books have been vandalized in Tokyo since January.

Hundreds of Anne Frank books have been vandalized in Tokyo since January.

Japan has been hit with an ugly string of vandalism recently, with hundreds of copies of Anne Frank books defaced in Tokyo libraries. Martin Fackler writes for the New York Times that copies of Anne Frank: The Diary of A Young Girl, which details her going into hiding from the Nazis, have been targeted, along with other books about the young Holocaust victim.

Across 31 libraries in Tokyo, 265 damaged books have been discovered, most of them with pages torn or ripped out entirely. From the extent of the damage, it’s clear that these aren’t isolated, random incidents. Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean at the Simon Wiesenthal Center (a Jewish rights organization based in Los Angeles) said in a statement printed by the Japan Times:

The geographic scope of these incidents strongly suggest an organized effort to denigrate the memory of the most famous of the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis.

Only people imbued with bigotry and hatred would seek to destroy Anne’s historic words of courage, hope and love in the face of impending doom.

Fackler explains that Japan doesn’t have an extensive history of anti-Semitism, though “magazine articles and books have occasionally been written that deny the Holocaust or claim that a Jewish conspiracy was behind various historical events. One book, published in 1979, wrongly proclaimed that Enola Gay…meant ‘Kill the Emperor’ in Yiddish.”

Japanese government spokesperson Yoshihide Suga apologized for the incident, describing it as “extremely regrettable and shameful.” Some of the affected libraries have taken their Anne Frank books of the shelves to protect them, and Suga promised a police investigation into the vandalism.

 

Nick Davies is a publicist at Melville House.

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