Diary of Anne Frank: Protesters wave Nazi flags outside a local theater performance in Michigan

CNN
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A group of people carrying Nazi flags demonstrated outside a community theater performance of “The Diary of Anne Frank” in Livingston County, Michigan, to demonstrate anti-Semitism.

According to CNN affiliate WXYZ, several masked men waving Nazi flags and reportedly shouting anti-Semitic and racist slurs appeared outside American Legion Post 141 in Howell during the play on Saturday.

“People were shocked. They were horrified,” Army veteran Bobby Brite told WXYZ. “Everything you would expect.”

Brite said many of the 75 spectators were afraid to leave the building and had to be escorted to their cars.

“No one in America should feel this way,” he said.

The Fowlerville Community Theater, which staged the production, said in a statement that the play “is about real people who lost their lives in the Holocaust,” adding that the cast and crew “strive to make their story as realistic as possible.” to tell as much as possible.”

“On Saturday night, things got more real than we expected,” the group said. “The presence of the demonstrators outside gave us a small insight into the fear and insecurity of those in hiding.”

“As a theater we want to encourage people to feel and think. We hope that by presenting Anne’s story we can help ensure that the atrocities of the past are not repeated.”

CNN has contacted the Livingston County Sheriff's Office for further details.

Citing the sheriff's office, The Detroit News reported that the protesters left after being told to clear the parking lot of the Legion post and then had a brief exchange with patrons across the street.

The Anti-Defamation League's Michigan regional office said on social media that it was “disgusted by the far-right extremists who praised Hitler and waved Nazi flags in front of an American Legion where the play took place.”

The district faced similar forms of racism this year. In July, white supremacists marched through Howell, which is about 40 miles northwest of Detroit.

Threats to Jews in the US have tripled in the year-long period since Hamas' deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel, preliminary data provided to CNN by the ADL showed. In the weeks following October 7, reports of hate crimes and incidents against Jews, Muslims and Arabs increased in the United States.

“The Diary of Anne Frank” was published posthumously and translated into more than 70 languages ​​in more than 60 countries, with several film and stage adaptations. Her diary is often a teenager's first encounter with the horrors of the Holocaust during World War II.

She and seven other Jews, who had been hiding for almost two years in a secret annex above a canal-side warehouse in Amsterdam, were arrested and deported in 1944. Anne later died at the age of 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Growing fears of anti-Semitism remain a current issue – also in Amsterdam. In July, a statue of Anna with the word “Gaza” scrawled in red paint was vandalized in a local park. Most recently, violent clashes broke out in the city over the weekend between fans of an Israeli soccer team and counter-demonstrators, which were condemned by Dutch authorities as anti-Semitic.