The Vatican was asked to include Anne Frank as part of an ecumenical commemoration of “new martyrs” to be held in 2000, when the church marks the third millennium of its founding. The Italian newspaper La Stampa reported that the request to include the Dutch teen-age diarist, whose life and death have become a symbol of the Holocaust, had come from the archdiocese of Naples and the news agency of the Conference of Italian Bishops. Tullia Zevi, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, said the report came as a “total surprise.”
Reporting the stories that define our era. When history unfolds in real-time, the Jewish world turns to JTA. Your support ensures we can document the complexities of war and the resilience of Jewish communities with integrity.
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.