New York Daily News

Swedish official suspended for calling Anne Frank ‘immoral’

- BY PETER SBLENDORIO NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

A Swedish politician who described Anne Frank as “immoral” has been suspended amid an investigat­ion into her comments.

Rebecka Fallenkvis­t, a member of the country’s far-right Sweden Democrats, made the remarks in a recent Instagram post about Frank (photo), a teenage Holocaust victim who famously authored a diary chroniclin­g her Jewish family’s experience­s hiding in the Netherland­s.

The Sweden Democrats suspended Fallenkvis­t after the post, with party media director Oskar Cavalli-Bjorkman slamming her comments as “insensitiv­e and inappropri­ate,” according to TT, a Swedish news agency.

Israel’s Swedish ambassador also condemned Fallenkvis­t’s post as a “despicable insult” that is disrespect­ful of the memory of Anne Frank.”

“It comes in sharp contrast to #Sweden’s efforts to preserve the memory of the #Holocaust,” ambassador Ziv Nevo Kulman wrote in a tweet. “Unfortunat­ely, there are many more bad weeds that must be uprooted.”

Fallenkvis­t claims her comments were taken the wrong way.

“The book is a moving depiction of human good and evil,” Fallenkvis­t told the newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

“The good Anne, who in the first chapters is like any other young girl living her life in peace and finding an interest in boys (which I highlighte­d), is contrasted with the evil of Nazism,” Fallenkvis­t continued. “My story was aimed at the good and human in Anne while not playing down the evil to which she was subjected.”

Frank died at a German concentrat­ion camp in 1945 at age 15. Her book, “The Diary of a Young Girl,” was first published in Dutch in 1947 and has since been translated into more than 70 different languages.

 ?? ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States