The University of Groningen, in northern Holland, has confiscated all remaining copies of a student newspaper that poked fun at Anne Frank and made anti-Semitic remarks about the country’s Jewish community.
The director of the student union that publishes the paper immediately suspended three of its editors and is considering expelling them from the student group.
One of the editors, Peter Mooiman, wrote an article titled “Anne Frank Is Not Dead,” in which he alleged that Anne Frank is alive in Buenos Aires, where she has changed her sex.
The article was also contemptuous of Dutch Jews.
The public prosecutor is now examining whether the editors can be prosecuted for discrimination.
The student union director apologized for the insulting publication and as a compensatory gesture will give a certain amount of money to the Anne Frank Foundation, which exists to perpetuate Anne Frank’s memory and teach tolerance.
In his defense, Mooiman said his article must be seen as a “column” in which license must be allowed.
He said he also wrote it to draw attention to the suffering of the some 400 Palestinian Islamic fundamentalists who have been expelled by Israel and are now in a no-man’s land in southern Lebanon.
The publication of the insulting issue of the paper follows the acquittal a few weeks ago by an Amsterdam high court of a writer, Theo van Gogh, who wrote a similar column that made objectionable remarks about Anne Frank.
Like Mooiman, van Gogh said the comments were “only sick jokes,” to which a columnist is entitled.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
