Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Anne Frank Memorial In Idaho Vandalized

Boise, Idaho’s Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial was vandalized this week.

On memorial Tuesday afternoon, a tour group discovered “racist and anti-Semitic slurs” written on two different marble tablets, the Idaho Statesman reported.

Representative Dan Prinzing said he would not repeat the words reading the phrase written “because it was so offensive.”

The graffiti was written below the engraved first paragraph of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and on an engraved list of donors to the memorial.

“Now what does that do for us? It emboldens us,” Prinzing said, according to the Statesman. “It means our work is not done.”

Another swastika was spotted on Wednesday at the grounds, though it was unclear when this was drawn. The Boise Police Department has assigned a detective to investigate the case.

The Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial was named for Anne Frank, a Jewish girl forced into hiding in Holland during the Holocaust and who died at the Nazi concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. The memorial was founded in 2002 and is a large educational park with a series of monuments dedicated to human rights.

Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.