In Amsterdam, pro-Palestinian inscriptions were sprayed on a statue of Anne Frank

According to images circulating on X on Sunday, the base of the statue was tagged with the slogan “Free Gaza”, while both of the girl’s hands were painted blood red.

An Amsterdam statue of Anne Frank, a Jewish teenager who died in a Nazi camp during World War II and became world-famous for her account of her captivity, has been defaced with red paint and an inscription “Free Gaza”AFP learned on Sunday, August 4. According to images circulating on the X network and German media, including From Telegraphthe base of the statue was tagged with this slogan “Free Gaza” (“Free Gaza”), while both of the girl’s hands were painted the same blood-red color.

This is the second time in less than a month that this statue, located in a park in the south of Amsterdam, has been targeted, the website of local television AT5 pointed out on Sunday August. The media outlet was the first recipient of these photos. The information was later confirmed by a spokesperson for the Amsterdam police, contacted by AFP.

According to AT5, this same statue had already been damaged on July 9, and the municipality had then pleaded for reinforced protection of the place, with video surveillance cameras and night lighting. The statue was vandalized again probably during the night from Saturday to Sunday. “An investigation has been opened, there is no suspect identified at this time”the police spokesperson simply told AFP.

Anti-Semitic incidents have increased worldwide, particularly in the Netherlands, since the war in the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip. Anne Frank is a leading figure in the Dutch Jewish community, a victim of the Holocaust that killed about 75 percent of the country’s 140,000 Jews at the time. The teenager was first deported to Westerbork, a transit camp in the Netherlands, then transferred to Auschwitz (Poland) and Bergen-Belsen (Germany), where she died of typhus at the age of 16 in 1945.