Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

NowThis removes video saying Anne Frank did not die in Nazi camp

(JTA) — The progressive NowThis news website removed a segment of a video in which a student at George Washington University asserted that teenage Holocaust diarist Anne Frank did not die in a concentration camp.

The six-minute video about President Donald Trump’s executive order signed last month that directs “robust” enforcement of existing civil rights protections for Jews on campus slammed Trump for “defining what is and what isn’t being Jewish,” and said it was a “veiled way to silence Palestinian voices” against Israel. The order says attackers target Jews since they perceive them to be a race or having a shared national identity,

Senior Becca Lewis, who says she is Jewish, makes the false claim in the video about Anne Frank while speaking with two Palestinian students. They are wearing around their necks black-and-white checkered kaffiyehs, a traditional Arab headdress, which is worn as a symbol of Palestinian nationalism.

“What’s going to happen if there’s another Holocaust? Well, we’re seeing what’s happening. We’re seeing people die at the border for lack of medical care. That’s how Anne Frank died. She didn’t die in a concentration camp, she died from typhus,” Lewis says in the now-deleted video segment. The original video can be seen here.

Frank, in fact, died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in February or March 1945, likely of typhus.

NowThis tweeted a link to the video on Friday, days after the original had been posted, with a message reading: “CORRECTION: We have removed a segment of this video in which the speaker misspoke regarding Anne Frank’s death. These Jewish and Palestinian students are speaking out against Trump for equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism in his Judaism executive order.”

Critics called Lewis a Holocaust denier, and said her statement should have been left in order to cast doubt on the veracity of  other statements.

The post College student’s video blasting Trump says Anne Frank did not die in Nazi camp appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30

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.