'Cynical falsification of history'

German painting of Anne Frank in keffiyeh sparks outrage

German and Israeli officials say the depiction of the teen girl, a universal symbol of the Holocaust, crosses the line between legitimate art and antisemitic propaganda

A painting depicting Anne Frank as wearing a keffiyeh has drawn sharp criticism from German and Israeli officials, with some saying the work crosses the line between legitimate art and antisemitic propaganda.

The painting, by Italian artist Costantino Ciervo, is on display at the privately run Fluxus+ Museum in Potsdam as part of an exhibition titled “Commune – The Paradox of Imagination in the Middle East Conflict.” It shows Frank, a universal symbol of the Holocaust, wearing a red-and-white keffiyeh, writing with a pencil on what seems to be the screen of a modern tablet.

The Israeli Embassy in Germany has condemned the piece, calling it “a prime example of a growing artistic trend” in which artistic freedom is used to normalize “historical distortion, antisemitism and, ultimately, terrorism.” The embassy called out Ciervo for portraying Jews as “modern Nazis” and demanded the immediate removal of the piece.

Volker Beck, chairman of the German-Israeli Friendship Association, voiced similar concerns. He filed a police complaint against the exhibition’s curators, charging that the work trivializes the persecution suffered during the Holocaust, turning a victim of Nazism into a symbol of the Palestinian cause.

“It suggests Israel is doing to Palestinians what the Nazis did to Anne Frank,” Beck said. “Even if the artist is protected by freedom of expression, curators have a duty to prevent attacks on the dignity and memory of Jewish victims.”

Kai Diekmann, president of the Friends of Yad Vashem in Berlin and former editor of the Bild newspaper, also condemned the painting, saying it is “a clear distortion of the Holocaust and is nothing less than cynical falsification of history.”

“The Holocaust and its victims are not templates for political debates,” he said in a statement. “When Anne Frank is portrayed as Palestinian, and Israelis are implicitly labeled as the new Nazis, this immediately crosses the line of what the IHRA working definition describes as antisemitic – especially where Israeli policies are equated with those of Nazi Germany.”

The painter, Ciervo, has meanwhile rejected accusations of antisemitism, saying the painting is intended as political criticism of Israeli policies rather than an attack on Jews or Holocaust memory. “This work is about Israeli actions, not Judaism,” he said in a video posted to social media, adding that he “strongly rejects” claims that the piece is antisemitic.

Museum director Tamás Blaneschy also defended the exhibition, saying there is “no place, and never will be a place, for antisemitism” at the institution. Despite calls for its removal, the museum has said it will keep the artwork on display.

Anne Frank is world-renowned as the author of one of the most significant personal accounts of the Holocaust. It documents her daily life, hopes and fears as she hid with her family from the Nazis in a hidden attic in Amsterdam from 1942 until the family’s arrest in 1944. After being discovered, she was deported to concentration camps and died in 1945 at Bergen-Belsen.

Her diary, written from the vantage point of a young teenage girl, has captivated audiences around the world since it was published in 1947, and has since been translated into over 70 languages.