A member of an American neo-Nazi group is set to stand trial for allegedly projecting an antisemitic message onto the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
Robert Wilson has been extradited to the Netherlands from Poland where is he accused of spreading the antisemitic message.
A message, which read ‘inventor of the ballpoint pen’, was alleged to have been laser-projected onto the house where Anne Frank hid during the Holocaust in February.
The message is alleged to be a reference to a widely debunked antisemitic conspiracy theory alleging that Frank’s famous diary was a forgery because it was originally written with a ballpoint pen, which was invented only after World War II.
Frank, who is Jewish, was discovered by Hitler’s Nazi forces in 1944 and died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp the following year. The house where she hid with her family from the Nazis is now a museum.
The Anne Frank House organisation, which runs a museum on the property, said at the time of the incident: “With the projection and the video, the perpetrators are attacking the authenticity of Anne Frank’s diary and inciting hatred.
“It is an antisemitic and racist film. We are acutely aware of what this means for the Jewish community and for the city of Amsterdam as a whole.”
Wilson was arrested for the incident in April after Dutch authorities issued a European arrest warrant for him.
The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
He was then arrested again in July while trying to flee to Canada from an airport in Germany. He was held in Germany before being transferred to Amsterdam in late August.
Wilson, originally from Canada, is alleged to be a member of the Goyim Defense League, a neo-Nazi group based in Florida.
The group began spreading anti-Jewish conspiracies throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2020, the group was behind banners displayed in California that claimed a “Jewish plot” was responsible for coronavirus.
The group was also responsible for more than 450 propaganda campaigns last year, according to the ADL.
Wilson previously came under fire after posing outside Auschwitz with an offensive sign last year.
He was pictured last August standing outside of the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei gate at Auschwitz holding a sign reading “Shoah the ADL”.
In July, the Netherlands outlawed speech that specifically takes the form of Holocaust denial.
Wilson is set to appear in court in early October.
