Statue of Anne Frank in Amsterdam defaced with pro-Palestinian graffiti for a second time
The statue commemorating Anne Frank, one of the most famous victims of the Holocaust, was defaced with pro-Palestinian graffiti for the second time on Sunday.
The statue is located in Merwedeplein, near the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
According to images published on X, the base of the statue was spray-painted with the slogan "Free Gaza" while the girl's hands were painted with the same red color, AFP reported.
Police have opened an investigation into the most recent defacement, which likely occurred overnight Saturday into Sunday. An Amsterdam police spokesman told AFP that no suspect had yet been identified.
Frank, who died aged 16 in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945, is an icon of the Dutch Jewish community. Her diary has become one of the most influential accounts of the Holocaust, which wiped out around three-quarters of the country's 140,000 Jews during the Nazi German occupation.
The Amsterdam house where the Frank family took refuge for two years before being captured by the Nazis in 1944 — after which they were sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp — has become a museum dedicated to her story.
Sunday marks 80 years since the Nazis arrested her family on August 4, 1944.
It is the second time in less than a month that the statue of one of the world's most recognizable victims of the Holocaust has been targeted, according to television station AT5 and confirmed to AFP by the police source.
AT5 said the statue in a southern Amsterdam park was vandalized on July 9, after which the municipality called for increased protection of the site with video surveillance cameras and night-time lighting.
Antisemitic incidents have increased across the world since the beginning of Israel's war with Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip sparked by Hamas' October 7 attacks.
The October 7 attacks resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians. Israel's campaign against Hamas has killed at least 39,580 people in Gaza, according to the territory's health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.