A prominent member of a neo-Nazi group has been sentenced to two months in prison for projecting an antisemitic conspiracy theory into the Anne Frank House Museum, the Amsterdam building where Frank and his family hid from the Nazis during World War II.
Robert Wilson, a Polish-Canadian, has been charged with group insult and incitement to discrimination for posting the catchphrase “Ann [sic] Frank created a ballpoint pen” on the side of the museum in February with a laser projector mounted in his van.
Although the words seem innocuous, they refer to the nonsense conspiracy theory that the Jewish teenager’s famous diary is a forgery.
The incident sparked immediate outrage through the Netherlands, with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte condemning what he called a “reprehensible” act.
“We cannot and cannot accept this,” Rutte posted on X at the time.
The court appeared to agree on Thursday.
“Given the great symbolic importance of Anne Frank’s diary to commemorate the persecution of the Jews, this statement can be considered a form of Holocaust denial,” the court wrote in its decision.
Polish-Canadian Robert Wilson was sentenced to two months in prison for projecting antisemitic conspiracy theories onto the Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam.AP Photo/Peter Dejong
Wilson – who was not in court for the verdict – has already spent two months in pre-trial detention, so has effectively served the sentence.
Footage of his antisemitic actions was posted on the anti-Jewish Telegram channel. But the court said there was not enough evidence to actually convict him of distributing the racist image.
Wilson has long proclaimed his innocence, saying he was in Amsterdam for a weekend getaway with his girlfriend and daughter, but did not know where the museum was.
The museum is located in the house where Frank and his family hid from the Nazis during World War II. AP Wilson projected the phrase “Ann [sic] Frank created a ballpoint pen” over the building — a reference to the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Frank’s diary was forged.AP
Prosecutors said Wilson was a leading member of the Goyim Defense League, a neo-Nazi group.
It’s also not his first run-in with the law.
In the US, he faced charges of assault and homophobic slurs at neighbors. And Polish authorities are still investigating whether Wilson stood in front of the Auschwitz concentration camp with a sign printed with antisemitic slogans.
The phrase Wilson projected was a reference to a theory pushed by Holocaust deniers that claimed Frank’s journal was fake because some of the pages found among his papers were written in ballpoint pen.
Wilson claims that he is innocent and does not know where the museum is in Amsterdam.AP Photo/Peter Dejong
The pages, discovered in the 1980s, were accidentally left out of a diary in the 1960s, according to researchers. But conspiracy theorists say they can prove the diary is fake because ballpoint pens didn’t exist in the Netherlands in the 1940s.
Frank – who spent more than two years hiding with his family in a 17th-century canal house – kept a diary throughout his ex, which ended when the Gestapo arrested his family in the summer of 1944.
His father, Otto, was the only survivor of the German death camps they were sent to.
He published his daughter’s diary in 1947, fulfilling the 16-year-old’s lifelong dream of becoming a writer.
With Postal wire
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
