Suspected neo-Nazis charged for burning Anne Frank's diary

The men, aged 23 to 28 accused of holding a ceremony on June 24 during which they praised the Nazis and denied the Holocaust.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Prosecutors on Friday charged seven suspected neo-Nazis with incitement and disturbing the peace of the dead for burning a copy of Anne Frank's diary and a US flag during a celebration earlier this year. The men, aged 23 to 28 from Pretzien and Ploetzky in the eastern state of Saxony Anhalt, are accused of holding a ceremony on June 24 during which they praised the Nazis and denied the Holocaust. "Using neo-Nazi and Nazi language, they ridiculed Anne Frank, and with her all victims of Nazi concentration camps," Magdeburg prosecutors said in a statement. Denying the Holocaust carries a maximum sentence of five years in Germany. Anne Frank wrote her diary while she and her German-Jewish family hid in an Amsterdam attic for 25 months. They were eventually betrayed to the Nazis, and Anne died of typhus at age 15 at Bergen-Belsen, Germany, in 1945, weeks before the British army liberated the concentration camp. The trial is to open on February 26.