Anne Frank memorial in Boise, Idaho, vandalized with swastika stickers

By Ben Sales December 10, 2020

(JTA) — A statue of Anne Frank in Boise, Idaho, was vandalized with stickers bearing swastikas and the message “We are everywhere.”

The Boise Police Department found and removed nine of the stickers from the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial, according to KTVB, a local station. One of the stickers was placed over the diary held by the sculpture. They were placed there between Monday evening and Tuesday morning. Police are reviewing security footage to find the perpetrators.

“I fear for what is happening to our community,” read a Facebook post by the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights, the local organization that erected the memorial in 2002.

The memorial, until recently the only statue of Anne Frank in the United States, was toppled by vandals in 2007 and vandalized again in 2017.

Later, after an outpouring of support, the center wrote on Facebook, “Let us each stand up in our homes, neighborhoods, schools and places of work when we hear words that demean or marginalize members of our community. Let us each stand up and be a force of goodness.”

A photo posted by the center showed that, by Wednesday evening, bouquets of flowers had been lain at the statue’s feet.

“This is shocking and disturbing, and we know it does not reflect the values of our community,” Boise Mayor Lauren McLean said in a statement.

According to KTVB, the Boise memorial is the country’s only statue of Frank, a Dutch teenager who died in the Holocaust and whose diary of her experiences in hiding has made her a worldwide symbol of the hate and destruction wrought by the Nazis. In fact, a New Orleans museum erected a statue of Frank last year.

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