, Columnist
Is Abe Encouraging Japan's Nut Jobs?
In recent days at least 282 copies of Frank's memoirs have been vandalized at 36 libraries across Tokyo. No one knows who did it, or why. But it's easy to see the connection to Japan's own recent efforts to deface history.
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There's a reason the nuns in Queens had me and my classmates read Anne Frank's "The Diary of a Young Girl" several times -- the same reason that's made the book required reading around the globe. The 15-year-old's account of hiding from the Nazis is impervious to nut jobs who argue the Holocaust is fiction.
Shockingly, in recent days at least 282 copies of Frank's memoirs have been vandalized at 36 libraries across Tokyo -- their pages torn or defaced. No one knows who did it, or why. But it requires an acrobatic feat of compartmentalization not to see the connection to Japan's own recent efforts to deface history.