A heated argument is currently raging over the thesis that Anne Frank was betrayed by a Jew to the National Socialist security service in the Netherlands and that the latter were to blame for her murder in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The allegation, which is based on very thin evidence, is represented in one Book, which will also appear in German translation in March under the title “The Betrayal of Anne Frank – An Investigation”.
Yves Kugelmann, spokesman for the Anne Frank Fund founded by her father Otto Frank, condemns the claim that a Jew betrayed Anne Frank as one of “the most brilliant conspiracy myths and most effective anti-Semitism boosters in a long time”. At this point sets Anne Frank – The Podcast on: Instead of speculating and thereby underpinning existing prejudices and false claims, Austrian production provides enlightenment in a very fundamental way. And above all for those quite numerous and mostly young people who have little or no idea who Anne Frank was, what anti-Semitism is exactly and what crimes against humanity were committed in the Nazi concentration camps.
Bloggers like ena.maria.b and influencers like Rafi Veni read it
At its core, the podcast offers a reading of Anne Frank’s diary. The decisive factor is who reads: Büro Butter, a concept and design studio in Vienna, which, among other things, also runs the fact check portal of the Austrian news magazine profile designed and a campaign for Amnesty International, was able to win 46 people for his podcast project, who are mainly familiar to a young audience in Germany and Austria: the influencer Rafi Veni, the blogger ena.maria.b, musicians like Austrofred and actresses like Lisa Tritscher read some of the diary entries. Among the speakers are the cabaret artist Josef Hader, Danielle Spera, the director of the Jewish Museum in Vienna, and the Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen.
It is even more productive than listening to the podcast via one of the common platforms directly on the website annefrank.digital to go. There one scrolls along a timeline and regularly receives key information in text and images about the status of National Socialist Jewish policy, the progress of the World War and the situation in Amsterdam, the city where the girl Anne Frank went into hiding with her family in the summer of 1942 hoping to escape deportation by the Nazis in hiding. The readings of the individual diary entries are also built into this timeline, which are thus contextualized. In a very accessible way.