Here's the admission we've been waiting for.
The Anne Frank Center in the U.S. no longer sees itself this way. Rapaport, the organization’s new board chair, said it is neither a Jewish organization nor a Holocaust organization.
I have been one of the few journalists covering the disgusting fraud that is the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect. The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect was an obscure group taken over by Steven Goldstein (Jewish) and David Smith (non-Jewish), two radical activists from Garden State Equality, a New Jersey gay rights group.
Goldstein's hysterical all-caps rants (he once urged hacking Sarah Palin's cable channel to show gay porn) have gone viral because of his constant attacks on Trump and Republicans. Goldstein has exploited a murdered Jewish girl to produce viral content meant to be retweeted on the left. This disgusting trolling was eagerly seized on by the media which gave him endless airtime.
Now at least one mainstream media outlet has decided to take a closer look at what the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect is... and isn't.
Aussie Dave at Isreallycool had begun investigating the Center's dubious claims of a connection to Anne Frank.
What is interesting is, as I posted yesterday, the Anne Frank Center’s website at the time linked itself to Anne Frank House…
"Founded in 1977 by Anne’s father Otto, The Anne Frank Center USA, a partner of the Anne Frank House…"
But in 2016, changed the description to this..
"In 1959, Otto Frank, Anne’s father, founded our organization as the Anne Frank Foundation, the American partner of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel."
Wikipedia edits made things worse. Steven Goldstein allegedly swooped in to remove material about Otto Frank. The Atlantic investigation makes it clear there is no Otto Frank connection.
On its website, the American Anne Frank Center claims it was created in 1959 “with Anne’s father Otto Frank among its founders.” Goldstein provided me with a letter from 1958 as proof of the center’s origins. The letter appears to be a fundraising appeal from the Anne Frank Stichting in Amsterdam; at that time, it was trying to raise money to save Anne’s house from demolition. “It is contemplated that after this first fund raising no further appeals for large funds will be needed,” the letter said. Otto Frank is not its author. He is only mentioned once, toward the end: The upkeep costs of the house in Amsterdam would “be met by small contributions from school children in many countries and from a few private sources, including Anne’s father, Otto Frank,” it says.
Bauco van der Wal, who oversaw the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam during the late 1970s and ’80s, said he does not think any American Anne Frank organization existed in 1959. “I don’t think Otto Frank had anything to do with any organization set up with his approval or his initiative anywhere in the ’50s or ’60s,” he said. “I’m pretty sure. I would have known that.”
According to van der Wal, the U.S. organization now known as the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect wasn’t started for another two decades—and it was his job to start it. At the time, the Anne Frank Stichting was hoping to build an American fundraising arm: “We tried to see if we could find a foothold in the United States,” van der Wal said. He established the American Friends of the Anne Frank Center in New York City with the help of several Holocaust survivors, including a man from Austria named Ernest Nives and a man from the Netherlands named Jack Polak. Otto Frank was not part of that effort:
The contemporary organization tells the story differently. On its website, in emails to its supporters, and in the media, the center says it was started directly by Otto Frank. In a June 2016 email announcing a “new era” at the Anne Frank Center, Goldstein made this claim clear: “Otto Frank, Anne’s father, founded our organization—ours, right here in the United States—to partner with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel,” he wrote.
But other people who were around during the organization’s early years were also skeptical that Otto Frank was one of the founders in 1977. Grayson Covil, who served as a staffer and, later, as executive director during the late ’80s and ’90s, said 1977 was when the organization obtained its 501(c)(3) status. “I don’t believe that Otto Frank started the American Friends of the Anne Frank Center,” its name at the time, she said. Nives, the first president of the organization, died in 2006, but his wife, Fanny, told me she didn’t think Otto Frank was involved, either. “I think my husband met with him once or twice,” she said.
There's more, but suffice it to say, the Anne Frank Center was meant was a fundraising arm for a European organization that was not Otto Frank's legal heir either. It never had the sanction to speak in Anne Frank's name, as Steven Goldstein and David Smith are trying to do.
Furthermore the folks in charge of the hijacked organization have made it clear that they are not a Jewish or Holocaust group.
The Anne Frank Center in the U.S. no longer sees itself this way. Rapaport, the organization’s new board chair, said it is neither a Jewish organization nor a Holocaust organization.
Fine. Then change your name. And stop claiming the moral authority of the Jewish Holocaust organization that you admit you aren't. End the fraud.
And it’s acted accordingly. Over the last year and a half or so, all of the former employees, who mostly had backgrounds in museum work, have left. At least one was fired, said Rapaport.
Shortly after Goldstein came on, the organization disbanded a long-standing advisory committee of Holocaust scholars
Goldstein also shut down the little museum in New York City. ..The center has opened a new office in Manhattan and Los Angeles and hired staff with backgrounds in social-justice organizing.
You might call this Goldstein's own Kristalnacht. Purge the Jews, purge the Holocaust. Hijack the memory of a murdered Jewish girl for left-wing causes and viral trolling. Sickening.
It's time to restore respect for Anne Frank's name. It's time to stop the radical left from abusing and exploiting the Holocaust and Jewish suffering for its anti-Semitic agendas. It's time to tell the truth about the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect.