Harvard Student Magazine Apologizes For ‘Sexualizing Anne Frank’
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Aiden Pink May 15, 2019
A humor magazine published by Harvard University students apologized Tuesday after publishing a Photoshopped image of Anne Frank in a bikini, which was condemned by students and Jewish community leaders.
The Harvard Lampoon’s sexed-up image of the child Holocaust victim ran alongside the captions “Gone Before Her Time: Virtual Aging Technology Shows Us What Anne Frank Would Have Looked Like if She Hadn’t Died….Add this to your list of reasons the Holocaust sucked.”
The Harvard Lampoon is garbage pic.twitter.com/q4BAUS4ibI
— Cat Zhang (@CatZhang1) May 13, 2019
Harvard Hillel director Rabbi Jonah C. Steinberg wrote in an email to the Lampoon editors that the image was incredibly offensive. “Your depiction of Anne Frank’s face grafted to pinup imagery goes far beyond the distastefulness and provocativeness you obviously intend. It is the sexual violation of a child – one who, in life, was subjected to the most hideous of crimes,” Steinberg wrote, according to the Harvard Crimson. He went on to compare the image to Nazi propaganda cartoons.
Frank died at age 15, probably of typhus, at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1944. Her posthumously-published diary has since been read by millions of people.
Editors of the Lampoon issued an apology on Tuesday. “We realize the extent of offense we have inflicted and understand that we must take responsibility for our actions,” the statement read. ““We as individuals and we as an organization would like to apologize for our negligence in allowing this piece to be created for and printed in our latest issue. We are sorry for any harm we have caused. Furthermore, we want to both affirm and emphasize that the Lampoon condemns any and all forms of anti-Semitism.”
One of the Lampoon’s apologizing co-presidents, Jack Stovitz, once performed a stand-up comedy routine at a high school event about his “level of Jewishness,” according to his high school newspaper.
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter at @aidenpink.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
