Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Anne Frank Play Focuses On ‘Assault’ — Doesn’t Mention Jews Or Nazis

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — A play that ignores Anne Frank’s Jewish identity and features an unfounded assault allegation against a Jew who hid with her is generating controversy in the Netherlands.

The play, which is slated to premiere on Nov. 11 in the Netherlands, is set in modern times and mentions neither the Nazis nor why they murdered Anne Frank, the teenage diarist who wrote her world-famous journal while hiding in German-occupied Amsterdam during the Holocaust.

Esther Voet, the editor-in-chief of the Dutch-Jewish weekly NIW and a former leader of the CIDI watchdog on anti-Semitism, condemned the new play as “an unscrupulous falsification of history” in a scathing op-ed published Friday.

Apparently, “that pesky historical context, the one about the persecution of the Jews, that had to be done with already,” she wrote about the play. It is titled “Achter het Huis,” a phrase that means “behind the house.”

Voet singled out a “violent act” that is attributed in the play to Fritz Pfeffer, a Jewish dentist who lived with Anne Frank and her family and died in the Holocaust. At least one draft of the screenplay had him assaulting, possibly in a sexual manner, Margot Frank, Anne Frank’s sister, though there is no proof or an allegation that he had ever assaulted her or any other person.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

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. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.