Robert W. receives two months in prison for projecting an anti-Semitic text on the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. That has the court of Amsterdam judged on Thursday. The sentence is lower than the six months that the Public Prosecution Service had demanded against 42-year-old W.. The Public Prosecution Service also demanded an area ban for the municipality of Amsterdam for five years, but the court did not impose this on him.
At the beginning of this year, the text ‘Anne Frank invented the ballpoint pen’ was projected on the facade of the Anne Frank House. The text is a reference to an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Anne Frank did not write her diary herself. The same theory also denies the Holocaust. Video footage of the action surfaced in the right-wing extremist Telegram channel ‘The Laser Nazi Bunker’. W. was therefore also tried for distributing the images, but according to the court this had not been proven.
The court calls W.’s action “hurtful for Jews as a group, because the authenticity of the diary is denied.” The court views the projection as Holocaust denial, “and therefore very hurtful to the victims and their relatives.” The Anne Frank House and the Center for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI) filed a report. Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema called the action at the time “unadulterated anti-Semitism” and “an attack on Anne Frank’s legacy.”
Criminal cases abroad
The Polish-Canadian W. was arrested in Poland and taken to the Netherlands. The public prosecutor then spoke of “a very deliberately planned action intended to hurt others.” He was held in pre-trial detention for ninety days and was provisionally released at the beginning of this month.
A case is pending against him in the United States for physical assault while shouting homophobic slogans. In the US he is said to have an active role within right-wing extremist circles. A criminal case is also underway in Poland against the man for promoting fascism and hate speech, ANP reports.