Defacing Anne Frank: The Netherlands is dangerously inverting Jewish victimhood

On Christian Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, a mural of Anne Frank in Amersfoort was vandalized — her face carefully, meticulously erased. Painted more than 15 years ago by artist Bas van Oudheusden (alias Repelsteeltje), the mural originally appeared illegally on a noise barrier along the A28 motorway before being embraced and maintained by Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch national public works agency. Rijkswaterstaat’s acceptance symbolized a societal commitment to preserving Anne Frank’s legacy as a powerful emblem of innocence, courage, and the catastrophic consequences of hatred.

Now the mural stands defaced, symbolizing a disturbing trend across the Netherlands. Recently, Anne Frank monuments in Amsterdam and Gouda were similarly smeared with red paint and vandalized with pro-Gaza slogans, turning solemn memorials of Jewish suffering into provocative platforms for contemporary political protest. While some individuals may genuinely believe in expanding commemorations to recognize contemporary suffering, appropriating and distorting Holocaust memorials dangerously undermines the unique historical significance of Jewish victimhood and memory.

Forgotten victims of Kamp Amersfoort

Amersfoort itself holds profound historical connections to Anne Frank’s tragic story. Two of Anne’s courageous helpers, Johannes Kleiman and Victor Kugler, were imprisoned in Kamp Amersfoort, a Nazi transit and penal camp notorious for severe brutality, after their arrest by the Nazis. Kleiman was eventually released due to poor health, but Kugler endured forced labor until escaping in March 1945.

In my recent book, Het vergeten verhaal van de Joodse gevangenen van Kamp Amersfoort (“The Forgotten Story of the Jewish Prisoners of Camp Amersfoort”), published last year, I was the first to conclusively prove that Kamp Amersfoort functioned as a Holocaust camp. I highlighted the largely forgotten stories of Jewish women and children imprisoned there. Among them was a child born within the camp’s walls, while another, Bertha Judith de Pauw, tragically died there at just 7 months old. Barry Spanjaard, born in America to Dutch parents who returned to Holland with him in the 1930s, survived his imprisonment there, but was profoundly traumatized by his experiences. After liberation, Barry and his parents traveled to Switzerland for recovery, where tragically, his father succumbed to the cumulative effects of imprisonment in multiple camps, including Bergen-Belsen.

Many prisoners, including women and children, were later transferred to Bergen-Belsen, the same concentration camp vividly documented by Abel Herzberg in his diary Tweestromenland (translated as Between Two Streams: A Diary from Bergen-Belsen by Jack Santcross). Herzberg’s diary provides an honest portrayal, including the complex relationships and tensions among prisoners themselves. Notably, translator Santcross himself was a child prisoner in Kamp Amersfoort who, like Herzberg and his wife Thea, survived the harrowing April 1945 transport from Bergen-Belsen to Tröbitz, historically known as “The Lost Train.”

Despite the heartbreaking magnitude of their suffering, these child victims have scarcely been acknowledged in historical memory or collective consciousness. Given this stark historical neglect, it seems profoundly inappropriate to now replace or overshadow their memory with references to victims from Gaza — especially when such commemorations can easily become entangled in the propaganda strategies of extremist groups like Hamas, whose explicit goal remains the destruction of Israel.

Societal Indifference and Historical Distortions

Alarmingly, the mural’s artist, Van Oudheusden, reacted with troubling neutrality rather than outrage. Initially, he undertook the moral responsibility of depicting Anne Frank — a decision deeply meaningful to many. Now, his indifferent stance toward the defacement inadvertently normalizes an attack on Jewish memory. If Van Oudheusden remains passive regarding such a profound violation, perhaps he should confine himself to painting still life paintings, rather than symbols laden with moral significance.

This troubling indifference is symptomatic of a broader societal malaise that existed even before October 7, 2023. A notable example is the controversial 2022 “Cold Case” project, led by former FBI agent Vince Pankoke and Dutch journalist Pieter van Twisk, chronicled by Canadian author Rosemary Sullivan in her book The Betrayal of Anne Frank. The widely publicized investigation falsely accused Arnold van den Bergh, a Jewish notary and member of Amsterdam’s wartime Jewish Council, of betraying Anne Frank, despite relying heavily on speculative evidence. Dutch investigative journalist Natasha Gerson effectively refuted these allegations, highlighting their fundamental flaws. The Dutch publisher eventually withdrew the book, though, notably, publisher HarperCollins has not followed suit.

Dutch historian Connie Kristel (1956–2018), in her influential dissertation Geschiedschrijving als opdracht (“Historiography as a Mission: Abel Herzberg, Jacques Presser, and Loe de Jong on the Persecution of the Jews”), analyzed troubling antisemitic undertones in the Dutch reception of Abel Herzberg’s writings. Kristel revealed how Jews, including those tragically murdered during the Shoah, were perversely depicted as bearing guilt or responsibility for their own suffering — a deeply disturbing antisemitic trope. Some accounts even implied, almost triumphantly, that Jews themselves made life unbearable in the camps.

Kristel’s analysis aligns closely with Primo Levi’s exploration of moral complexity in his essay “The Grey Zone,” originally published as “La zona grigia” in his final published book, before his death in 1987, the insightful I sommersi e i salvati (1986). Levi considered this moral inversion — victims forced into complicity with their oppressors — the cruelest perversity of the Holocaust.

This historical inversion resonates with psychiatrist Zvi Rex’s haunting assertion: “The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.” Indeed, it seems even broader — sometimes it feels as if the world itself will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust. Recent chants in Germany of “Free Palestine from German guilt” illustrate attempts to liberate contemporary societies from Holocaust responsibility by recasting Jews as perpetrators rather than victims.

In the Netherlands, these dangerous inversions continue to escalate. A committee of Dutch civil servants and former diplomats recently launched the “4 mei inclusief” initiative (“Inclusive May 4th”), proposing the inclusion of Palestinian victims during the Dutch national Remembrance Day, traditionally dedicated to commemorating all Dutch war victims, including those from World War II and the Holocaust. Discussions are now underway about possibly postponing the official national remembrance itself, illustrating a disturbing trend toward historical inversion. This inversion of victims and perpetrators also prominently features in contemporary anti-Israel demonstrations. Recently, a lecture by Rawan Osman in Maastricht was aggressively disrupted and canceled due to intimidation by protestors affiliated with Free Palestine Maastricht. Shockingly, Free Palestine Maastricht subsequently demonized Osman herself, labeling her lecture as violently Zionist despite Osman and her audience having to be escorted out by police after being surrounded and threatened.

Safeguarding Trust 

Anne Frank was tragically unsafe during her lifetime; today, her memory faces renewed threats. Defacing her image, exploiting her suffering, and appropriating Holocaust remembrance represent deliberate attempts to erase Jewish victimhood and memory and replace them with politically driven narratives aligned dangerously with extremist propaganda explicitly aimed at undermining and destroying Israel.

We still face historiography as a mission. Part of this mission is actively resisting and correcting dangerous inversions of historical truth. To uphold the promise of “never again,” we must intensify our research, educate ourselves and others, critically engage with historical narratives, and vocally reject distortions of the past. Only through unwavering vigilance, rigorous scholarship, and decisive action can we protect historical memory and our collective humanity.