A community theater production of "The Diary of Anne Frank" in Michigan was marred Saturday night when five masked men positioned themselves outside the venue, brandishing Nazi flags and shouting antisemitic slurs. The threatening display created such tension that audience members required security escorts to reach their vehicles safely.

The cast members, who were portraying Anne Frank and her family, discovered the demonstrators' presence during intermission. In a powerful display of resilience, the actors maintained their roles as Jewish refugees hiding from the Nazis, ensuring the performance continued. "The shocked staff united and completed the performance with strength and professionalism," theater officials stated.

During a performance of The Diary of Anne Frank in Fowlerville, Michigan, masked protesters waving Nazi flags gathered outside the theater.

The Fowlerville Community Theater informed the audience of the incident at intermission, but the cast continued the play "with… pic.twitter.com/1tYcOEipOv

— TabZ (@TabZLIVE) November 13, 2024

"This production focuses on real people who lost their lives in the Holocaust, and we tried to tell their story as realistically as possible," the theater's statement read. "On Saturday night, things became more real than we expected; the presence of protesters outside gave us a small glimpse into the fear and uncertainty felt by those in hiding."

Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Jewish Democrat who represents the district and was recently elected to the Senate, strongly condemned the incident. "It's more important than ever to fight hatred, especially at the local level," Slotkin wrote on X. "And to the handful of cowardly antisemites hiding behind masks and waving Nazi flags: Nazis always lose."

"Hail Hitler" and "Hail Trump" - People wave Nazi flags outside theatre presenting Jewish play, "The Diary of Anne Frank," in Michigan. pic.twitter.com/bjC2Z1e4Ak

— Bryan Dawson (@BryanDawsonUSA) November 12, 2024

The performance was held at the American Legion Hall in Howell, a city of about 10,000 residents east of Lansing, which had provided its space to the Fowlerville Community Theater. Legion officials confirmed they had agreed to host the play specifically to address concerns about rising antisemitism.

Bobby Bright, a legion commander and military veteran, told local news outlets, "People were stunned and shocked." He noted that the situation had become so menacing that numerous audience members required security escorts to their vehicles following the performance.

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A controversial mural depicting Anne Frank wearing a Palestinian scarf has appeared in Bergen, Norway, igniting a fierce debate about the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict. The provocative artwork, created by anonymous street artist Töddel, draws parallels between the Holocaust victim and Palestinian civilians, while criticizing Israeli actions in Gaza.

Street artist Töddel unveiled a new artwork Tuesday at Speakers Corner in Bergen, featuring Anne Frank wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh.

Bergen #Norway the country of #NobelPeacePrize

The pro-Hamas Nazis show no respect for the Holocaust, as they share the same views towards Jews and Israel as their Nazi ancestors.

Source: TV2 https://t.co/ZoWwRCqPLV pic.twitter.com/ZO1YMFHwik

— On Elpeleg (@onelpeleg) July 24, 2024

The piece, titled "Death of the Innocent," is a commentary on the Israeli state's 'genocide' of thousands of Palestinian children and women, according to a press release the artist sent to TV 2. "Who, like Anne Frank, are innocent of everything except their ethnicity," says Töddel.

"The work is also a comment on Israeli public figures' attempts to turn all calls for humanitarianism into antisemitism. It's too shameful, and they cannot get away with it even though we're living in 2024," added Töddel.

The wall where Töddel's mural appears has become a canvas for various politically charged artworks. Previous notable pieces include AFK's portrayal of politician Sylvi Listhaug and another Töddel creation featuring a crucified Bjørnar Moxnes wearing sunglasses with his trousers at his knees.

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Keshet Studios will produce a limited series for Disney+ about Miep Gies, the Dutch woman who sheltered Anne Frank and her family during World War II.

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"A Small Light" will be told from Gies' perspective, who was also the one who found Anne's diary after the family was arrested by the Nazis, and guarded it until Otto Frank – Anne's father and the only family member to survive the war – shared it with the world.

Keshet Studios – the Israeli production studio's Los Angeles branch – will create the series in cooperation with ABC Signature with "Grey's Anatomy" writers Joan Rater and Tony Phelan. 

Gies, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 100, famously said, "I don't like being called a hero because no one should ever think you have to be special to help others. Even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room."

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Anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made "deeply offensive" comments when he suggested things are worse for people today than they were for Anne Frank, the teenager who died in a Nazi concentration camp after hiding with her family in a secret annex in an Amsterdam house for two years, several Jewish advocacy and Holocaust remembrance groups said Monday.

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"Making reckless comparisons to the Holocaust, the murder of six million Jews, for a political agenda is outrageous and deeply offensive. Those who carelessly invoke Anne Frank, the star badge, and the Nuremberg Trials exploit history and the consequences of hate," the US Holocaust Memorial Museum said Monday in a statement posted to Twitter.

1/ Making reckless comparisons to the Holocaust, the murder of six million Jews, for a political agenda is outrageous and deeply offensive. Those who carelessly invoke Anne Frank, the star badge, and the Nuremberg Trials exploit history and the consequences of hate.

— US Holocaust Museum (@HolocaustMuseum) January 24, 2022

A spokesman said the museum made the statement in response to Kennedy's speech and other recent incidents of people invoking the Holocaust for political purposes. The museum also pointed out that Anne Frank was one of the 1.5 million children who died during the Holocaust.

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote on Twitter that Kennedy invoking Anne Frank's memory and the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis to make a comparison with the US government "working to ensure the health of its citizens is deeply inaccurate, deeply offensive and deeply troubling. This must stop."

Among the others condemning the comment was Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, in Jerusalem, which said it "denigrates the memory of its victims and survivors."

.@RobertKennedyJr invoking Anne Frank's memory and the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis as a comparison to the U.S. gov't working to ensure the health of its citizens is deeply inaccurate, deeply offensive and deeply troubling. This must stop. https://t.co/CbvV10xMou

— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) January 24, 2022

During a Sunday rally in Washington organized by his anti-vaccine nonprofit group Children's Health Defense, Kennedy complained that people's rights were being violated by public health measures that had been taken to reduce the number of people sickened and killed by COVID-19. He said the nation's leading infectious disease doctor, Anthony Fauci, was orchestrating "fascism."

"Even in Hitler's Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did," said Kennedy, a nephew of President John F. Kennedy and the son of his slain brother, former US attorney general, civil rights activist and Democratic presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy.

Kennedy Jr. went on to say that today, "the mechanisms are being put in place that will make it so none of us can run and none of us can hide," and complained about 5G, the newest generation of wireless communication networks, and about vaccine passports.

An Associated Press investigation published last month detailed how Kennedy has invoked the specter of Nazis and the Holocaust in his work to sow doubts about vaccines and agitate against public health efforts to bring the pandemic under control, such as requiring masks or vaccine mandates.

In a speech to the Ron Paul Institute in October, for example, Kennedy referenced Nazis multiple times, obliquely comparing public health measures put in place by governments around the world to Nazi propaganda meant to scare people into abandoning critical thinking. Last month, he put out a video that showed a picture of Fauci with a Hitler mustache.

In an email sent by a spokeswoman on Monday, Kennedy described his statement as "a factual observation that technology has given an arsenal of frightening instrumentalities to totalitarian elements."

"I referred to Anne Frank's terrible two-year ordeal only by way of showing that modern surveillance capacity would make her courageous feat virtually impossible today," he said.

Kennedy said he "compared no one to the Nazis or Adolf Hitler," but did not immediately address other instances when he has invoked Nazis and Hitler to make a political point.

Kennedy apologized in 2015, after he used the word "holocaust" to describe children whom he believes were hurt by vaccines. He said at the time that he "employed the term during an impromptu speech."

That he has continued to use such comparisons indicates that "he means it," said Dr. David Gorski, a cancer surgeon at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit and a critic of the anti-vaccine movement who has tracked Kennedy's rhetoric for over 15 years. Gorski said Kennedy has been making Nazi and Holocaust references in relation to vaccines since at least 2013.

In the past few years, Gorski said, Kennedy has been more open about using such language, which he said may indicate Kennedy senses it resonates with the new fan base he has built up during the pandemic, or that the consequences of using such language aren't "unacceptably negative."

The AP investigation documented how Kennedy had grown his group during the pandemic, expanding his audience and pulling in millions of dollars in new funding.

Gorski said the language demonstrates one of the ways Kennedy likes to connect with his audience: buttering them up by portraying them as going against the flow and smarter than everyone else.

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"If vaccine mandates are totalitarian like Nazis and the Soviet Union and that sort of thing, what does that make the anti-vaxxers? They're brave freedom fighters," Gorski said. "There's flattery in those analogies."

Aryeh Tuchman of the ADL's Center on Extremism said Kennedy's repeated comments invoking the Holocaust were shocking. Such rhetoric ratchets up tensions and leads to the demonization of people who disagree, whipping up anger and rage, Tuchman said, adding that the repeated comments showed Kennedy had a callous disregard for the feelings of Jewish people.

"These analogies are historically racist and hurtful to Jews and, frankly, to anyone who has a historical memory of who the Nazis were and what they did," Tuchman said. "Anything in the pursuit of his agenda."

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Police say vandals painted antisemitic slogans and insignia in tunnels near Idaho's Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial on Friday, as millions of Jews around the United States are in the midst of celebrating Hanukkah.

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The Boise Police Department announced on Twitter that they are currently in the search for whoever is responsible for the vandalism along the Greenbelt in Boise.

"We recognize the significance of this being the last Saturday of Hanukkah and we are reaching out to Jewish leaders in our community to let them know we will not stand for such hateful and abhorrent behavior in our city," Boise Police Department Chief Ryan Lee said on Twitter.

According to KIVI, the graffiti included antisemitic comments directed towards Jews, hate messages directed at minority groups, and symbols such as swastikas.

Thankfully, the graffiti was swiftly covered up by Boise Parks and Recreation staff, reported authorities.

"The antisemitic messages contained in the graffiti found along the Greenbelt put a literal and figurative stain on our community. This will not be tolerated," Boise Mayor Lauren McLean asserted in a statement published on Facebook.

"Hate speech is reprehensible. It is not who we are as a city and is not part of our shared values. I invite all good people of Boise to stand with me, as I stand with our Jewish neighbors, to rebuke this hate."

According to the memorial's website, the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial in Idaho is the sole Anne Frank memorial in the United States. The educational park has an amphitheater, a quotations wall, a garden, and a classroom, as well as a bronze monument of Anne Frank.

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Delete the tweet: The Everton soccer team sent out a tweet on Saturday honoring its fans who have died of COVID-19, but whoever compiled the image used in the message mistakenly included a photo of Anne Frank.

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"We've lost far, far too many Evertonians over the course of the pandemic. We wish they could all be here with us today. RIP Blues," the original tweet read.

Today was all about you. Those reunited with us at Goodison, but sadly also those that couldn't be there who we have lost over the course of the pandemic.

RIP Blues. pic.twitter.com/aWNh5gRlAn

— Everton (@Everton) August 14, 2021

The message included a black and white video that featured pictures of some of the club's fans, along with the names of all the fans the team was aware had died of COVID – and Frank, who was captured by the Nazis and died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Once the mistake was pointed out, the Everton FC organization deleted the original tweet and put up another one that did not include Frank's image.

The team compiled the video using pictures of COVID victims submitted by other fans. It is believed that the image of Anne Frank was sent in as a prank.

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The ceremonial laying of the first stone, on which the name of a Dutch Holocaust victim was engraved, is the latest step in construction of the Dutch memorial, which will feature the names of more than 102,000 Jews, Roma and Sinti who were murdered in Nazi concentration camps during World War II or who died on their way to the camps.

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"I almost can't believe it, but it is now really happening," Jacques Grishaver, chairman of the Netherlands Auschwitz Committee, said in a statement. "The first of the more than 102,000 stones has been laid."

The last of the stones, each of which is engraved with a name, is expected to be placed in the memorial in March.

A Dutch court cleared the way last year for the memorial to be constructed. The Amsterdam Municipality had granted permission for construction to start in 2017, but residents argued that it was too big for the location and could cause traffic problems.

Jacqueline van Maarsen, who knew Anne Frank before the diarist and her family were captured and sent to Nazi concentration camps, laid a stone engraved by laser with the name, date of birth and age of Dina Frankenhuis, who was murdered at aged 20, on June 4, 1943, at the Sobibor camp.

Designed by Polish-Jewish architect Daniel Libeskind, the memorial in the heart of Amsterdam's historic Jewish Quarter will be made up of walls shaped to form four Hebrew letters spelling out a word that translates as "In Memory Of."

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Ben M. Freeman, who said that he broke the story, wrote that "Naming a shade of blush after Anne Frank, who was a victim of genocide, is revolting. Dead Jews are not a marketing opportunity."

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Journalist Claire Coleman tweeted that she was "staggered" that at no point did anyone in the WULT team "wake up" and say, "This might not be appropriate."

The Anne Frank blush is one of a series of five shades of liquid blush, all named after famous women. Other shades pay tribute to writer Virginia Woolf, philanthropist Melinda Gates, and painter Frida Kahlo.

Following the uproar, WULT said that the legacy of Anne Frank's famous book The Diary of a Young Girl was to inspire hope even though it was written in circumstances of unimaginable hardship.

The company said it was "extremely sorry" that its "tribute" caused offense, and said that its intention had been exactly the opposite: "To shine a little light … during the global pandemic."

"We sincerely apologize for any miscommunication," the company said, adding that it had stopped sales of "Dream Like Anne."

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'[Trump] has no right to define what being Jewish is' — These Jewish and Palestinian students are speaking out against Trump for equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism in his Judaism executive order pic.twitter.com/hyqHWqirbv

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) January 15, 2020

Donning a traditional Palestinian keffiyeh scarf, Becca Lewis, a senior at George Washington University said in the video: "What's going to happen if there's another Holocaust? Well, we're seeing what's happening. We're seeing people die at the border for lack of medical care. That's how Anne Frank died. She didn't die from a concentration camp, she died from typhus."

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It's safe to say, though, had Frank not been imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen by the Nazis, she probably wouldn't have contracted typhus in the first place.

The video, which came out on Wednesday, featured Palestinian advocates responding to US President Donald Trump's executive order that protects Jewish students from being exposed to anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism on college campuses. 

"I am Jewish and it is because I am Jewish that I fight for the rights and liberty for all people," Lewis said through crocodile tears. "I do not associate my Judaism with a nation-state."

Sitting beside Lewis, Mohamed Elsherbiny, a freshman at American University, added, "The executive order has nothing to do with the safety of Jewish allies. It is solely meant to repress Palestinian advocates." 

Lewis argued Trump's executive order does nothing to protect Jewish students and suggested that universities instead "give us more kosher options on campus, give us a shul on campus, give us days off for religious holidays."

Lewis, who is a proponent of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, failed to add that the cause has actually targeted students simply for seeking kosher food options because doing so is "pro-Israel."

Elsherbiny then went on to praise the diversity of the Jewish people while, ironically, producers interspersed footage of Jews in Israel – the very country they are fighting against – to underscore his point.

Gabrielle Rossner, a senior at George Washington University, also chimed into the anti-Israel hatefest to say, "I went to high school and what I saw as my Jewish identity – this deep social justice tradition rooted in solidarity and collective liberation suddenly be applied to this state that I felt had no representation with me whatsoever."

Rossner apparently failed to realize that there's nothing "sudden" about Jews having an affinity for Israel and applying their values and traditions to a country the religion has considered its homeland for thousands of years.

Luckily, commentators on Twitter didn't seem to fall for the student's rhetoric and slammed the video for being anti-Semitic, ahistorical and indulging in Holocaust denial.  

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Taking to Instagram on Tuesday, Portman said she recalled the importance of her grim visit to the living museum in Amsterdam.

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"When I was 16 I visited Anne Frank's house with Miep Gies, the woman who bravely hid Anne and her family when the Nazis were rounding up Jews in Amsterdam and much of Europe," Portman wrote in her post.

"Today, I shudder at the thought of a young girl hiding somewhere in my own country, afraid to turn on her light or make a noise or play outside lest she get rounded up by our government," she added.

The Jewish actress added the hashtags #notinmyname and #notinmycountry.

US President Donald Trump's administration announced last week that it would begin widespread immigration raids in an effort to deport illegal aliens from the United States.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency said that it was looking to deport at least 2,000 people in the country illegally, including immigrant families.

This article was originally published by i24NEWS.

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