Statue of Anne Frank in Netherlands defaced with 'free Gaza' slogan, police investigate

A statue of Anne Frank, famous for her diary account of hiding from the Nazis during World War II, has been covered with pro-Palestinian graffiti, AFP learnt on Sunday.

According to images published on X, the base of the statue was spray-painted with the slogan “Free Gaza”, while the girl’s hands were painted with the same blood-red colour.

Police have opened an investigation into the most recent defacement, which likely occurred in the night from Saturday to Sunday, an Amsterdam police spokesman told AFP, adding that no suspect had yet been identified.

Anne Frank, who died aged 16 in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945, is an icon of the Dutch Jewish community.

Her diary has become one of the most influential accounts of the Holocaust, which wiped out around three-quarters of the country’s 140,000 Jews during the Nazi German occupation.

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The Amsterdam house where the Frank family took refuge for two years before being captured by the Nazis in 1944 – after which they were sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp – has become a museum dedicated to her story.

It is the second time in less than a month that the statue of one of the world’s most recognisable victims of the Holocaust has been targeted, according to television station AT5 and confirmed to AFP by the police source.

AT5 said that the statue in a southern Amsterdam park had been vandalised on July 9, after which the municipality called for increased protection of the site with video surveillance cameras and night-time lighting.

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Anti-Semitic incidents have multiplied across the world since the beginning of Israel’s war with Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attacks.

The October 7 attacks resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures, while militants also seized 251 hostages of whom 111 are still held captive in Gaza.

Israel’s military says that 39 of those still held in the Palestinian territory are already dead.

Israel’s campaign against Hamas has killed at least 39,580 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.