A group of masked white supremacists were seen waving Nazi flags and yelling antisemitic slurs outside of an Anne Frank play in Michigan last weekend.
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The incident took place at the Howell American Legion, where the Fowlerville Community Theatre was performing The Diary of Anne Frank, media outlet WXYZ reported. One of the members of the American Legion, Bobby Brite, stated that 75 people attended the performance on Saturday, Nov. 9.
However, things took a turn when the majority of The Diary of Anne Frank performance attendees were afraid to leave the building after hearing and seeing the group of white supremacists outside the building.
“We had to escort them to their cars. No one in America should feel like that,” Brite explained. He also managed to record the masked group outside, who had Nazi flags. When he confronted the group, he was verbally attacked.
Brite noted that some of the people in the group hate “1488” on their masks. This is believed to be a known white supremacy symbol.
“People were shocked. They were appalled,” Brite, who is also an Army vet, recalled. “Everything you would expect.”
The Diary of Anne Frank is a stage adaptation of the famous book written by Jewish girl Anne Frank. In the diary, Anne wrote about her life leading up to the Holocaust as well as her and her family’s time in hiding amid the Nazi occupation in the Netherlands. Her family was eventually discovered and arrested.
Anne tragically passed away from typhus while imprisoned in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp weeks before liberation. Her sister Margot also died in the same camp from typhus.
Her father, Otto, was the only family member to survive the genocide.
The Local American Legion Hosted the Event Due to Increased Number of Antisemitism in America
Brite explained the local American Legion decided to host the play due to the increased number of antisemitic incidents across the U.S.
“It’s actually heartbreaking. It’s a terrible, terrible thing,” he said about the increased antisemitism with the U.S. “I don’t know how we come away from it.”
Brite further stated that he and the rest of the American Legion members present at the event helped escort the attendees to their vehicles.
“No one in America should feel like that,” he pointed out.
Meanwhile, Becky Frank, who played Edith Frank in the play told WLNS that the incident was “upsetting” to her. “Just knowing the character I was playing, knowing a lot of the research on my character,” she said.
Brandon Johnson also told the media outlet, “It kind of surprised me to have something that I was doing and had my name on getting protested.”
The veterans who witnessed the situation couldn’t believe what they saw. “I have trouble wrapping my head around it. It’s so wrong on so many fronts,” veteran Mark Epley shared. “To have that much hatred in them, it makes no sense to me.”
“We need to work together to bring this country back together instead of tearing it apart,” Epley added.
Livingston County Sheriff’s Department responded to the incident. Nothing had turned physically violent and no arrests were made.