Idaho Unites To Repair Vandalized Anne Frank Memorial
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Aiden Pink May 25, 2017
Two weeks after a memorial to Anne Frank in Boise, Idaho was vandalized with racist and anti-Semitic slurs, the community raised nearly $30,000 for the nonprofit that hosts it.
The city has “turned the Idaho Statesman on Wednesday.
“Two weeks ago hate walked into the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial,” Prinzing said. “It came under the cover of darkness. It came in the form of words. Words that were both vile and vicious. They were words that attacked members of our community. The question is how does one react when confronted with hate?”
Among those who responded was the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, a New York-based nonprofit, which brought its play “Letters from Anne and Martin,” about the lives of Anne Frank and Martin Luther King, Jr., to Boise at no cost.
“This a major thing that Boise is going through,” Boise High School junior Ana Rowe said. “We usually are a pretty mild city. So something like this has been a big shock.”
“We recognized that one single act that targeted the memorial is not us,” Prinzing said. “It is not our community. We are actually defined by the overwhelming support that has come about after the act occurred.”
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected].
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