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Tickets Sold Out Through March for First Full-Scale Replica of Anne Frank’s Hidden Annex in NYC
Inside “Anne Frank The Exhibition” in New York City. Photo: John Halpern
The first full-scale recreation of the secret annex where Anne Frank hid for two years from Nazis occupying The Netherlands during World War II opened for its world premiere in New York City a week ago to such success that tickets are sold out for two months, organizers told The Algemeiner on Monday.
“We’ve been sold out every day and we are now sold out through March, which is wonderful,” said Michael Glickman, who is the New York representative for the Anne Frank House and the former director of the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan. “The response has been overwhelmingly positive [from] both adults, students, and everyone in between.” He added that the exhibit has already had more than 10,000 visitors in just its first week.
“Anne Frank The Exhibition” is being hosted at the Center for Jewish History, which houses the world’s largest Jewish archive outside of Israel, and is a collaboration with the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam. It opened on International Holocaust Remembrance Day last Monday and is scheduled to close on April 30.
The first of its kind, the recreation of the annex is meant to be a limited release exhibit that will travel to other cities in the country, Glickman said. The immersive exhibit also marks the first time that the annex has been completely recreated outside of Amsterdam, and the first time that dozens of artifacts will be seen in the United States — many of which have never been displayed publicly.
Thirteen-year-old Frank, her parents, older sister, and four other Jews hid in the annex to evade Nazi capture in Amsterdam starting in 1942 until they were discovered and arrested in 1944. The annex is also where Frank penned her famous Holocaust diary while hiding in rooms located in the back house of her father’s company in Amsterdam. When Frank and the others were arrested in 1944, she was first transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, and then with her sister they were sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, where they both died of typhus in February 1945. Frank was 15 and her sister was 18 or 19.
The Anne Frank House assembled a team of fabricators, designers, and builders to reconstruct in New York City the five rooms where Frank, her family, and others lived in hiding during the Holocaust. The rooms are filled with furniture and personal possessions, including Frank’s first photo album from 1929-1942; her typed and handwritten invitation to her friend for a film screening in her home; and poetry handwritten by Frank in her friends’ poetry albums. Also on display is the Oscar won by Shelley Winters for the 1959 film “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
The exhibit spans more than 7,500 square feet and features over 100 original artifacts from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. A large chunk of the reconstructed annex was made in The Netherlands and shipped over to New York City on freight liners, according to Glickman. “This exhibit came together in record time,” he added. “I’ve been doing these sort of things for a very long time in my career [and] I’ve never seen anything happen as fast. From start to finish, this was a 10-month process.”
Frank’s father, Otto Frank, has a personal connection to New York. He worked in New York City from 1909-1911, before he met and married his wife, Edith. Otto’s roommate at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, Nathan Straus, Jr., invited him to come to New York and work at his family’s department store, Macy’s. Otto worked for about six months as an intern at Macy’s and afterwards worked as an intern at a bank until he left New York in the spring of 1911. The former university roommates maintained contact after Otto returned to Europe.
Years later, Nathan tried to help Otto and his family secure visas to the United States to escape Nazi-occupied Europe, but was unsuccessful. Otto was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. After World War II, when he returned to Amsterdam, his former assistant, Miep Gies, gave him Anne’s diary. She had retrieved it from the annex after the Frank family was arrested, hoping to give it to Anne one day. Otto published his daughter’s diary — Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl — first in Dutch, German, and French, and it has since become one of the most translated books in the world. Otto died in 1980 at the age of 91.
The Anne Frank House, an independent nonprofit organization, was established in 1957, in cooperation with Otto. For nearly seven decades, it has preserved the annex where the Frank family hid during World War II.
“Anne’s legacy is remarkable, as represented in the diary she left us, and as one of the 1.5 million Jewish children who were murdered at the hands of Nazi officials and their collaborators,” Ronald Leopold, executive director of the Anne Frank House, said in a released statement. “Through this exhibition, the Anne Frank House offers insights into how this could have happened and what it means for us today. The exhibition provides perspectives, geared toward younger generations, that are certain to deepen our collective understanding of Anne Frank and hopefully provide a better understanding of ourselves.”
“By bringing this exhibition to New York — a place with many ties to Anne’s story— the Anne Frank House is expanding the reach of our work to encourage more people to remember Anne Frank, reflect on her life story, and respond by standing against antisemitism and hatred in their own communities,” he added.
“In a time of rising antisemitism, her diary serves as both a warning and a call to action, reminding us of the devastating impact of hatred,” said Dr. Gavriel Rosenfeld, president of the Center for Jewish History. “This exhibition challenges us to confront these dangers head-on and honor the memory of those lost in the Holocaust.”
The post Tickets Sold Out Through March for First Full-Scale Replica of Anne Frank’s Hidden Annex in NYC first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Colombia Appoints First Ambassador to ‘State of Palestine’ Amid Deepening Rift With Israel
Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro speaks during the inauguration of the International Book Fair (FilBo) in Bogota, Colombia, April 17, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez
Colombia has appointed its first ambassador to the Palestinian Authority, marking a significant diplomatic shift a year after severing ties with Israel and pledging to open an embassy in Ramallah.
On Monday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro officially appointed Jorge Iván Ospina — former mayor of Cali, Colombia’s third most populous city — as the country’s first ambassador to the “State of Palestine.”
A close ally of Petro, Ospina is well known for his outspoken hostility toward Israel following the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
He has previously sparked controversy by comparing the Israel Defense Forces’ campaign in Gaza against the Palestinian terrorist group to the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime during World War II.
In a post on X, Ospina publicly confirmed his appointment, expressing solidarity with the “heroic Palestinian people.” He also pledged to “denounce the ongoing genocide that the Palestinian people are suffering today” and to dedicate himself to advancing their freedom and dignity.
Infinita gratitud al Sr Pdte de la República @petrogustavo y a la Sra Canciller @laurisarabia por designarme como Embajador de nuestra Nación ante el heroico pueblo Palestino, la solidaridad, la denuncia al genocidio que hoy sufren, la libertad de quienes hoy no están, los retos pic.twitter.com/5u3JuyYkcx
— Jorge Ivan Ospina (@JorgeIvanOspina) May 26, 2025
The Colombian diplomat indicated that it is still uncertain whether he will carry out his duties from Ramallah in the West Bank or operate from a neighboring country.
“We will need to discuss with Israel and determine the necessary steps to enable the establishment of the Colombian embassy in Ramallah,” Ospina told AFP. “We recognize that the Palestinian state and the State of Israel must coexist.”
This latest move builds on Colombia’s 2018 official recognition of “Palestine.” According to Ospina, the new embassy will prioritize securing the release of Colombian-Israeli citizen Elkana Bohbot, supporting humanitarian aid for Palestinians, and advancing the recognition of a two-state solution.
Despite decades of close diplomatic and military ties — with Jerusalem supplying Colombia with warplanes, surveillance technology, and assault rifles since the 1990s — Petro severed relations with the Jewish state last year.
On Monday, the Colombian president called on the United States to help stop what he described as “the genocide in Gaza,” while condemning Israel’s defensive campaign in the enclave.
“In the fight for their lives, there are girls trying to survive the bombing of a school by Netanyahu, the genocidal man,” Petro said in a post on X, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “There is a decisive complicity in producing this horror in the US and the EU. What we see is produced by Nazis.”
En la lucha por la vida. Niñas tratando de sobrevivir el bombardeo hecho por Netanyahu, el genocida, a una escuela. Hay una complicidad determinante para producir este horror en EEUU y la Unión Europea.
Lo que vemos lo producen Nazis pic.twitter.com/gTr8dYbMLR— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) May 26, 2025
Colombia has been one of the most outspoken critics of Israel’s actions, with Petro backing the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza. Israel adamantly rejects the allegations.
The Latin American country has also joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing the Jewish state of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against Hamas in Gaza.
Israeli leaders have condemned the case as an “obscene exploitation” of the Genocide Convention, noting that the Jewish state is targeting terrorists who use civilians as human shields in its military campaign.
Last year, the ICJ ruled there was “plausibility” to South Africa’s claims that Palestinians had a right to be protected from genocide. However, the top UN court did not make a determination on the merits of South Africa’s allegations, nor did it call for Israel to halt its military campaign.
Instead, the ICJ issued a more general directive that Israel must make sure it prevents acts of genocide. The ruling also called for the release of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas during the terrorist group’s invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
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Jewish Children Attacked in London, Harassed in New York Amid Rising Antisemitism
A Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) car. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
The growing wave of antisemitism across the globe continued to crash down on Jewish teens and children with incidents Monday in the United Kingdom and Friday in New York.
A Jewish teen required hospitalization after a group of approximately seven men used a knife to attack him and two other Jewish boys at northwest London’s Hampstead Underground Station on Monday evening. Police have opened an investigation into the assault and robbery as racially motivated. Hampstead is one of the country’s largest Jewish communities, with a 2021 Jewish population of 8,851.
Jewish security agency Shomrim stated on X that it was “appealing for any witnesses to the incident which took place or anyone with information to come forward … Shomrim is supporting the victims, and we encourage anyone who has been affected or who has experienced any form of antisemitism to get in touch. Shomrim specializes in reporting and supporting victims of antisemitic crime.”
Shomrim NW London responded yesterday, 26th May at 8:30pm, to reports of a #racially motivated assault and threats with a #knife on three #Jewish boys at #Hampstead Underground Station.
Suspects are believed to be a group of 6-7 males. One of the victims was admitted to hospital… pic.twitter.com/EORK4Sumdl
— Shomrim North West London (@shomrimlondon) May 27, 2025
London saw a previous antisemitic attack against adolescents in London on Nov. 25, 2024, when a man threw glass bottles from a high-rise balcony, targeting Jewish girls, one of whom required hospitalization from a head injury.
In February, the Community Security Trust (CST), a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters, said that 2024 included 3,528 recorded antisemitic incidents across the UK, the second worst year in the country’s history, following 2023. This included 260 cases at schools, 223 at synagogues or with congregants as victims, and 1,240 taking place on the internet.
Mark Gardner, the CST’s chief executive, praised “the defiance and pride that our community has shown, despite everything it has been through” and described how “those who are complicit in this antisemitism range from social media giants to the Islamist and far left extremists who celebrated the Hamas terror attacks.”
Students in Brooklyn also experienced antisemitism, when they reported their charter school’s bus driver pulled the vehicle over to the side of the road in order to evangelize his religious beliefs, including the claim of collective Jewish guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. This resulted in one Jewish pupil crying and the students arriving 30 minutes late to class at Brooklyn Prospect International Elementary Charter School, the New York Post reported.
The driver reportedly said, “The only one who can deliver you isn’t religion, it’s Jesus.”
In response to a student’s question about Jesus and Judaism, the driver said, “Yes, he was a Jew and basically Jews — his own kind — killed him.” He added, “They basically killed him because he said he was the son of God … These were religious leaders who killed him.” Some students texted their parents in real time during the driver’s antisemitic sermonizing. At one point he distributed white hats with black crosses and asked students to pray with him.
One parent told the New York Post that the driver “definitely held the kids captive.”
The school has since suspended the as-yet unnamed driver, sent a note to parents informing them of the incident, filed a complaint with the service who provided him, and requested a new person to fill the role.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) 2024 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents recorded 860 incidents (9 percent of the total nationwide) in K-12 schools in the US, a decrease of 26 percent from 2023. The most prominent of these antisemitic acts was swastika vandalism.
The Brooklyn school bus incident took place just two days before a protest outside the Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn, which resulted in police officers removing the demonstrators. The activists seemed intent on disrupting members of the global Hasidic movement within Orthodox Judaism as they were conducting a Torah ceremony.
According to the ADL’s audit, New York — the state with the largest Jewish population in the US — led the country in antisemitic incidents, with 15 percent of the total. The incidents included 912 cases of harassment (second highest nationally), 443 acts of vandalism (highest nationally), and 82 assaults (highest nationally). Comparable to the country as a whole, 58 percent of the state’s incidents included anti-Israel sentiment. New York’s colleges also experienced more incidents than those of any other state.
Sixty-eight percent of incidents occurred in New York City. The ADL reported that “the targeting of Orthodox Jews has become particularly concerning, with Brooklyn alone — home to numerous Orthodox Jewish communities — accounting for 39 percent of all assaults in the state. This reflects a dangerous pattern of escalating violence against visibly Jewish individuals.”
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‘Pod Save America’ Hosts Accuse Israel of ‘Genocide’
Pod Save America hosts on tour. Photo: Screenshot
On a recent episode of Pod Save America, hosts Ben Rhodes and Tommy Vietor, alumni of the former Obama administration, slammed Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza as a “genocide” and accused the Jewish state of killing at least 100,000 people in the enclave — a number that even exceeds the figures put out by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
“[The Palestinians] are — this is a population that lives in a place that has been entirely destroyed, right. Like almost every structure destroyed or damaged,” said Rhodes, an adviser and speechwriter in former US President Barack Obama’s White House. “I talked about in the interview, but like the death toll is much higher than you know they can report anymore. It’s probably like somewhere over 100,000 people. They’ve not let any food into the Gaza Strip.”
Rhodes dismissed Israel’s new plan to control aid distribution in Gaza, arguing that the Jewish state has only allowed a “dribble” of food to be delivered to civilians. He falsely accused Israel of “entirely killing civilians at this point,” not mentioning the military campaign is aimed at targeting Hamas.
“That’s a genocide,” Rhodes said. “And people don’t like to hear that term, but I don’t really know what other what the military rationale is to starve children and bomb innocent people in tents.”
After a two-month pause, Israel has allowed aid trucks to resume entering the Gaza Strip. According to Israel, around 170 trucks entered Gaza on Monday. Since allowing aid deliveries to restart last week, over 600 aid trucks have been allowed into the war-torn enclave. Israel says that it ceased aid deliveries to pressure Hamas, the terrorist group which rules Gaza and regularly steals aid for its own purposes, to release the remaining hostages it kidnapped from southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Vietor, who also served as a speechwriter for Obama, then cited Drop Site, a new pro-Palestinian news outlet, as a “great” publication that, according to him, has done valuable work in hiring journalists to document the ongoing war in Gaza. However, critics have accused Drop Site of being apoloigists for Hamas. The outlet’s lead reporter, Jeremy Scahill, has described Hamas as a “resistance,” echoing the terminology used by supporters of the internationally designated terrorist group.
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel and the subsequent Israeli military campaign in Gaza, the Pod Save America podcast, known for its sharp Democratic analysis and former Obama staffer hosts, has struggled to address the ongoing war in Gaza with the same clarity and confidence that characterizes much of its political commentary. While the hosts have tackled other contentious issues, their discussions on Gaza have been sporadic, cautious, and often notably brief, drawing criticism from some longtime listeners.
The show, which typically provides liberal commentary on American politics, has appeared hesitant to engage deeply with the complex dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Initial episodes after Oct. 7 expressed horror at the violence but largely emphasized Israel’s right to self-defense. As civilian casualties mounted and global criticism of Israel’s military actions grew, the podcast’s treatment of the topic remained limited — often sidelined in favor of domestic political issues such as the 2024 US presidential election.
The reticence to engage in discussions centered around the Israel-Hamas war has sparked disappointment among parts of the show’s progressive audience, particularly younger listeners who have pushed for a more critical stance on US foreign policy and military aid to Israel.
Additionally, the show has also been under pressure from progressive staffers, who have urged the show’s hosts to adopt a more critical stance against Israel. According to reports, many of the show’s staffers wear keffiyehs — a traditional Arab headdress that has been repurposed after Oct. 7 to indicate support for the Palestinian cause.
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