Canadian-Polish suspect convicted in anti-Semitic projection on Anne Frank House

On Thursday, the court sentenced Robert W. to two months in prison for projecting an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory onto the Anne Frank House in February. According to the court, there is enough evidence to show that he was the one who projected the text on the Amsterdam institution. As he already served three months in pre-trial custody, he doesn’t have to go back to jail, RTL Nieuws reports.

The Public Prosecution Service (OM) recommended that the court sentence W. to six months in prison.

The words “Anne Frank is the inventor of the ballpoint pen,” in Dutch, were projected on the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam at around 9:00 p.m. on February 6. The words refer to a conspiracy theory that denies the Holocaust. According to the Anne Frank Foundation, they refer to two loose sheets of paper found in the diary written in ballpoint pen, which had not become popular until after the Second World War.

Various researchers concluded that a previous researcher must have left the loose sheets of paper in the diary while studying the text as they are clearly newer than the diary. Still, the conspiracy theorists insist the use of the ballpoint pen shows that the diary, and therefore also the Holocaust, were faked.

Suspect Robert W., a 42-year-old Polish Canadian man, was arrested in Poland in April and extradited to the Netherlands in August. In court, he confirmed that he had been in Amsterdam from February 5th to 7th but denied any involvement in the anti-Semitic projection.

The OM charged the man with coercion, group defamation of Jews, and the publication of discriminatory texts. “Anne Frank House was burdened by having the text on the façade, which expresses contempt for Anne Frank, the world-famous Anne Frank House, and for the diary,” the OM said during the trial. “People who happened to pass by the building that evening were forced to read that text.”