Cover of the illustrated version of Anne Frank's Diary. The diary of Anne Frank is a world-famous part of the Holocaust literature. The original work has been adapted with illustrations by the screenwriter and filmmaker Ari Folman and the illustrator David Polonsky. Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation (2019) has already been translated into 20 languages, published in some 60 countries, and has headed the bestseller lists in 5 countries. Image: By courtesy of the Anne Frank Fonds, Basle.
Together with the respective school boards, ultra-conservative parents in the USA are continuing their school-cleansing campaigns against supposedly indecent literature in school and class libraries.
In the Keller Independent School District in a suburb of Fort Worth/Texas a particularly destructive example of intolerance towards literature is currently playing out, much to the disbelief and outrage of the Holocaust survivors:
A recent illustrated edition of Anne Frank’s Diary is to be banned from classroom and school libraries, because of supposed sexual references. For a time the same kind of censorship also targeted the Bible in the Keller School District.
Commenting in Berlin on the cleansing campaigns of ultra-conservatives, Christoph Heubner, Executive Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee, said:
“The Diary of Anne Frank is a treasure shared by people throughout the world. Anne Frank and her testimony are highly esteemed and well-loved by young people around the globe. Holocaust survivors are horrified and outraged to see that ultra-conservatives in America are now also targeting The Diary of Anne Frank and her legacy, and trampling them underfoot.”