On Christian Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, a mural of Anne Frank in Amersfoort was deliberately vandalized—her face carefully, meticulously erased. Painted over fifteen 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.

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 seven months old.........

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