‘Anne Frank’ High-Speed Train Draws Criticism Over Echo Of Nazi Deportations
Image by Getty
By Ari Feldman November 1, 2017
Germany’s national railway company is drawing criticism after it proposed to name one of its trains after Anne Frank, the Telegraph reported. In a move that is being called “tasteless” and “insensitive,” Deutsche Bahn had planned the homage to Anne Frank as a symbol of tolerance.
Critics have said that it is inappropriate to name a train after one of the world’s most famous Holocaust victims when millions of Holocaust victims were taken to their death on trains. In fact, Deutsche Bahn is a successor company to the national railway firm used by Nazis in the 1930s and ’40s.
“The combination of Anne Frank and a train evokes associations with the persecution of the Jews and the deportations during the Second World War,” the Anne Frank Foundation said in a statement.
Anne Frank was one of 2,500 names submitted in a public vote for historical figures to adorn 25 new high-speed trains.
“The problem with this decision is not that Anne Frank stands for tolerance, but that the trains of Deutsche Bahn, as the successor to the German Reichsbahn, are still a symbol of the Holocaust,” wrote Nils Kottmann, a German columnist.
Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aefeldman
The Forward is free to read but not free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
