Anne Frank's hiding place: Amsterdam
צילום: שלום בר טל
Germany: 7 charged for burning Anne Frank diary
Germany prosecutes men for burning Anne Frank diary, charges them with incitement; disparaging the dead. Local politicians concerned far-right groups gaining strength; Saxony-Anhalt government announces drive to prevent strengthening of neo-Nazis
German prosecutors charge seven men on Thursday for burning a copy of Anne Frank's diary in an incident that stoked concern about the spread of neo-Nazi ideology in eastern Germany.
The men, aged 23-28 are charged with incitement and disparaging the dead for burning the book and praising Adolf Hitler's Nazis at a party in a village in Saxony-Anhalt state on June 24, prosecutor Uwe Horburg said.
They also played down the Holocaust against Europe's Jews during their midsummer night's party, Horburg said in a statement.
Their actions and use of Nazi-style language "mocked Anne Frank and with her all the victims of the former concentration camps," Horburg said.
Mainstream politicians and Jewish leaders are concerned that far-right groups, including violent neo-Nazis, are growing in strength in eastern Germany. Far-right parties sit in three eastern state parliaments.
Experts say they are exploiting the region's shallow democratic roots after decades of communism and tapping frustration at the depressed local economy.
Saxony-Anhalt's state government announced a drive to prevent the spread of far-right ideas earlier this week in response to incidents including the book-burning and alleged anti-Semitism at a school.
Prosecutors are investigating three youths who allegedly forced a student to run around the school yard last week with a sign around his neck reading: "I am the biggest swine in the village, I hang around with Jews."
Anne Frank wrote her famous diary while she and her German-Jewish family hid in an Amsterdam attic for 25 months. They eventually were betrayed to the Nazis, and Frank died at age 15 of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.
Only her father survived the war. He published her notes, helping make "The Diary of Anne Frank" the first popular book on the Holocaust.
