You, Too, Can Live Like Anne Frank!

Ruth Ellen Gruber draws attention to some clueless bad taste:

anne-frank

LIve like Anne Frank, lovely Amsterdam attic apartment.

…Anne Frank apartment has a small roof patio at the back.The apartment comprises 2 rooms, 1 large and 1 small.

One has double bed and other 2 singles. The front room has a double bed and the back room has 2 single beds as well as the bath tub with shower which has low head high in the shower as the ceiling is slopped so not suitable for very tall people.

There is fully fitted kitchen and a separate WC

…Leidseplein the main square full of night bars and clubs as well as restaurants is also within walking distance along the canal making it a nice walk.

In a follow-up piece for the JTA, Gruber tells us that

…I informed a friend at the Anne Frank House about the ad and he assured me that the Anne Frank Foundation, which oversees the museum, would be taking action. The foundation has legal control over the Anne Frank name, he explained. No one can name anything Anne Frank without its permission.

She adds:

For many years I’ve written about how abstract ideas of Jews and Jewish culture can become commercialized commodities in European countries where few if any Jews live today. Clearly there is a correlation between the attempt to use Anne Frank to rent an apartment and the ways that Jews, Jewish symbols and Jewish stereotypes are used in other types of Jewish-themed tourist promotion.

That’s true enough, but I don’t think the lack of actual Jews living in these countries is the determining factor. Many American Christian Zionists also have “abstract ideas of Jews”, which is why Pastor John Hagee, despite his philo-semitism, couldn’t see the bad taste in opining about how God sent Hitler as a “hunter” to persuade Jews to establish Israel. And Jewish culture is also commodified and appropriated by some Christian Zionist groups, as I blogged here.

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