Yves Kugelmann says ‘it’s a matter of fact’ that a Dutch institution is again trying to seize the family’s possessions
STEVE ANDERSON THE INDPENDENT UK
A bitter row between two organisations that commemorate the legacy of Anne Frank has resulted in a board member of one of the charities comparing the other to the Nazis.
The comments were made by Yves Kugelmann, a board member of the Switzerland-based Anne Frank Fund, in an interview with a Dutch newspaper, regarding contested documents held by the Anne Frank Foundation in Amsterdam.
The Frank family archive, which contains 25,000 letters, documents and photos from several generations, was loaned to the Foundation by the Fund in 2007 for a term of 10 years, but now the Fund, headed by Anne’s closest living relative, her cousin Bernhard ‘Buddy’ Elias, wants it back.
The Basel-based charity wants to set up a new permanent Frank Family Centre devoted to the whole family ( and not just to the famous diarist) at the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt, the city in which Anne was born in 1929.
Speaking to De Volkskrant newspaper, Mr Kugelmann said: “In the 1940s, the Frank family had its possessions seized by the Germans and their accomplices. Now a Dutch institution is trying again to carry out a seizure.”
Approached by the Associated Press to confirm the quote that appeared to equate the Anne Frank Foundation with Nazi Germany, Mr Kugelmann said: “It’s a matter fact.”
Aside from the row over the loan agreement, the Foundation now insists that the entire archive does not belong to the Fund.
A spokeswoman for the Dutch Fund, best known for running the Anne Frank House museum, located in the actual Amsterdam canal-side building where the young girl and her family hid during the German occupation of the Netherlands, said it would return parts of the archive that belong to the Fund. Eventually.
The disagreement stems in part from the decision made by Anne Frank’s father, Otto, who survived the war and died in Switzerland in 1980. He played a part in establishing Anne Frank House and gave the original copy of Anne’s writings to the Dutch state. However, he left his family estate to the Swiss-based Fund, including, crucially, publishing rights to the diary.
David Barnouw, a researcher at the Netherlands’ Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, said Kugelmann’s comparison of the Foundation to the Nazis is “not fair.” But he added that he didn’t know which side is in the right.
He said that the Fund had for many years used proceeds from the diary to fund its charity activities, such as combating anti-Semitism and promoting awareness of the Holocaust, and left the Foundation to focus on Anne’s story.
The two organizations collided in the 1990s over fundraising activities by the Foundation. The Foundation’s main source of income was from selling tickets to the million-odd visitors the Anne Frank House receives each year, and it was soliciting donations for a major renovation.
The Fund objected to what it saw as the wrong kind of commercialisation of Anne Frank’s legacy, and attempted to win exclusive rights to Anne Frank’s name as a trademark. But a Swiss court ruled in 1997 that the Foundation could continue to use the name in fundraising.
Mr Barnouw said he was sympathetic to the Fund’s desire to build a museum focused on the Frank family. Sometimes the amount of attention given to Anne Frank seems disproportionate, given that she was one of millions of Holocaust victims, he said.
“But,” he added, “without Anne Frank, there is no family museum.”
Categories: Europe, Netherlands, Switzerland