Thursday, April 22, 2010

Anne Frank and the Jos babies: the crime that isn’t theirs

My friends, Daan and Thomas, and I passed by the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. (Picture left). In this house, Anne Frank, her sister and her Jewish parents, hid from Hitler’s men and machinery during the World War II. (Their offence was that they were Jewish. Hitler was reaching for the jugular of every Jew). Here, Anne and her family hid for two years. Here she recorded her feelings and fears in a diary. Anne and her family were betrayed by a neighbour. They were arrested and taken to one of Hitler’s concentration camps. There Anne and her sister, Margot, died of typhus in 1945. Otto, her dad, was the only one who survived the war. From Anne’s surviving diary, movies have been produced and books written. Anne Frank House is a tourist centre today — see the long queue (picture below).

Anne’s case reminded me of the babies in Jos that were butchered in the dead of the night by herdsmen, earlier that week. The offence of the babies was that they were Berom and Christian just as Anne was Jew—an offence that wasn’t theirs.

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