Why Is Anne Frank In a Keffiyeh?
- Ofek Kehila
- Dec 21
- 3 min read
Updated: 6d
A painting of Anne Frank wearing a keffiyeh is currently being exhibited at a museum in Potsdam, Germany. This isn’t the first time that the Holocaust, its victims, and symbols have been appropriated by pro-Palestinian activism, changed in meaning, and replicated in a distorted manner.
Let’s delve into the history of Anne Frank’s usage for anti-Israel propaganda and the dangers of drawing parallels.
Anne Frank in a keffiyeh
Anne Frank (1929-1945), a German-born Jewish girl, was just sixteen years old when she died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, becoming one of the countless victims of the Holocaust. After her diary was published in 1947, Anne Frank gained posthumous fame and recognition for her bravery in the face of persecution during humanity’s darkest hours. Her figure stands out as one of the best-known symbols of the Holocaust.
Recently, Anne Frank was depicted by an Italian artist named Costantino Ciervo while wearing a keffiyeh, a traditional headdress strongly associated with pro-Palestinian activism. The painting, which is currently on display at the Fluxus+ Museum in Potsdam, Germany, has sparked criticism: a prominent symbol of the persecution and genocide of Jewish people is being used to advance the Palestinian political agenda.
In July 2024, the anonymous artist Töddel painted a mural of Anne Frank wearing a keffiyeh in Bergen, Norway. Whereas this appropriation, too, was denounced as a hateful form of anti-Israel protest and a blunt distortion of Holocaust memory, the artist defended his work by comparing the sufferings of Anne Frank with those of Palestinian children and women in Gaza.
In November 2023, a mural in Milan portraying Anne Frank was defaced with pro-Palestinian slogans just one day after its creation.
In March 2018, South African students marked “Israel Apartheid Week” with posters and flyers depicting Anne Frank dressed in a keffiyeh. An explanation written on the flyers claimed they draw “attention to the fact that the same racism, hardship and oppression that Jews faced during the Nazi times is repeated in modern times.”
Dangers of drawing parallels
In the cases above, pro-Palestinian activists have exploited the figure of Anne Frank to draw a dangerous parallel between the Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, equating Zionism with racism and colonialism, Israel with Nazi Germany, and war with genocide.
The anti-Israel message is clear: the same Jewish nation that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust is now committing atrocities similar, if not identical, to those perpetrated by the Nazis.
According to the World Jewish Congress, these parallels pose several dangers. First, drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to the Nazis is a form of Holocaust inversion, where the Israelis are misleadingly cast as the modern-day Nazis.
Second, it is also an inversion of morality. Instead of constituting a lesson for the entire world, the Holocaust is presented solely as a moral indictment of the Jews and the state of Israel.
These comparisons are also a distortion of the reality in the Middle East and a trivialization of the Holocaust’s victims. Since these parallels aim at provoking hostility to and prejudice against Jewish people as a whole, they constitute a form of antisemitism.
By dressing Anne Frank in a keffiyeh, Palestinian activists seek to demonize and delegitimize Jewish people and Israel. They intend to rewrite history, suggesting that the Holocaust, which was the attempt to systematically annihilate Jews and other groups in Europe, is taking the modern-day form of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even though the two have nothing in common.
Wrap up
On May 22, 1944, one year before she died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Anne Frank wrote in her diary: “To our great sorrow and dismay, we’ve heard that many people have changed their attitude toward us Jews. We’ve been told that antisemitism has cropped up in circles where once it would have been unthinkable. This fact has affected us all very, very deeply. The reason for the hatred is understandable, maybe even human, but that doesn’t make it right […] I have only one hope: that this antisemitism is just a passing thing.”
The appropriation of Anne Frank by anti-Israel activism is a form of antisemitism.
Ofek Kehila (Israel, 1987) is a scholar of Spanish Golden Age literature and Latin American literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. His research bridges the gap between those traditions, highlighting their aesthetic, cultural, and historical dialogue. He holds a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2022) and was a postdoctoral fellow at Freie Universität Berlin (2023-2025).