Turning the light on the unknown ---
If you have ever had the opportunity to visit either Anne Frank's home in Amsterdam, or the Holocaust Museum here in Naples, you will not wonder why, when presented with the opportunity, we chose to invite Anne Frank's step-sister Mrs. Eva Schloss to be our guest speaker at our Tenth Anniversary celebration. And now, over today's newswires, we learn of the senseless destruction of library books.
Hate-based vandalism is usually a product of fear, and fear is usually a by-product of facing the unknown.
As the news of 265 Anne Frank books, “The Diary of a Young Girl” being vandalized in Tokyo libraries sweeps across the world, one cannot help but wonder what would motivate such a senseless act of destruction. In addition, books referring to Anne Frank have also been ripped and torn at 31 public municipal libraries in Tokyo since January.
The news has been met with emotions ranging from disgust to confusion as one country after another questions these senseless acts.
Anne Frank’s Diary is the most widely read book of the Holocaust, documenting the two years Anne and her family spent hiding in a concealed apartment in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam during World War 2. After her family was betrayed and deported, Anne died at age 15 in a German concentration camp in 1945. Only her father, Otto Frank, survived and published her diary.
While Japan thoroughly investigates these acts being labeled as “hate crimes”, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, believes "... the geographic scope of these incidents strongly suggests an organized effort to denigrate the memory of the most famous of the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis in the Second World War Holocaust.
"I know from my many visits to Japan how much Anne Frank is studied and revered by millions of Japanese. Only people imbued with bigotry and hatred would seek to destroy Anne's historic words of courage, hope and love in the face of impending doom," said Cooper. "We are calling on Japanese authorities to step up efforts to identify and deal with the perpetrators of this hate campaign."
Here in Naples, coincidentally, we just happen to be practicing ‘preventive maintenance’, with our Historic Evening’s presentation of a Conversation with Eva Schloss, step-sister of Anne Frank. Knowledge and enlightenment, information and literally ‘turning the light on’ the unknown can do a lot to dispel the latent fears and misinformation that exist about the Holocaust and its few remaining survivors even today. Having survived this terrible experience, Mrs. Schloss speaks candidly in her own words, but without hate and negativity, hoping to overcome worldwide bigotry and violence and promote world peace through education.