Scores of copies of Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl kept in public libraries across Tokyo have been vandalized, officials said on Friday.
Pages in at least 250 copies of the diary or publications containing biographies on Anne Frank, Nazi persecution of Jews and related materials have been torn, the council of public libraries in the Japanese capital said.
More than a dozen books have also been damaged at libraries in two other nearby areas, media reported.
Photo: AFP
“We have complaints from five of [Tokyo’s 23] wards so far, but I don’t yet know exactly how many libraries are affected,” council head Satomi Murata said. “We don’t know why this happened or who did it.”
“Each book had 10 to 20 pages torn out, leaving it unusable,” said Kaori Shiba, the archives director at the central library in Shinjuku Ward, where 39 books were vandalized at three libraries.
Toshihiro Obayashi, deputy director of the central library in the Suginami area, said 119 books have been damaged at 11 of its 13 public libraries, adding nothing like this had ever happened before.
“Each and every book that comes up under the index of Anne Frank has been damaged at our library,” Obayashi said.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, the US-based international Jewish rights group, said on its Web site that it was shocked and concerned.
“The geographic scope of these incidents strongly suggest an organized effort to denigrate the memory of the most famous of the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis in the World War II Holocaust,” Abraham Cooper, the center’s associate dean, said in a statement.
“Only people imbued with bigotry and hatred would seek to destroy Anne’s historic words of courage, hope and love in the face of impending doom... We are calling on Japanese authorities to step up efforts to identify and deal with the perpetrators of this hate campaign,” Cooper added.
The diary, written by a Jewish girl who lived in Amsterdam during the time of the Holocaust, was added to the UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Memory of the World Register in 2009.
Yasumi Iwakami, a freelance journalist who writes on social causes in Japan, tweeted there had been sporadic “delusional” arguments about the existence of a Jewish conspiracy surrounding the Holocaust.
“But violence has not presented itself to this extent before,” he said, calling the incidents the “advent of crude anti-Semitism.”
The spree comes amid criticism of a rightward shift in Japanese politics under nationalist Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, with a recent volley of provocative comments about Japan’s wartime past that have sparked accusations of revisionism by China and South Korea.
Largely homogenous Japan does not have a very big Jewish community, with the vast majority of people believing in an admixture of imported Buddhism and indigenous Shintoism.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number