A Sweden Democrats official was recently suspended by the far-right party for making degrading remarks about the Jewish Holocaust victim known for her diary, Anne Frank.
In one of the Instagram post which has now been deleted, Rebecka Fallenkvist called Frank “immoral”, among other things. The following information has been shared via Swedish media.
Frank, who wrote her diary while in hiding in Amsterdam before she was captured, died at age 15 in Nazi Germany’s Bergen-Belsen death camp in February 1945.
The post by Fallenkvist, a 26-year-old head of TV programming for the Swedish Democrats, prompted strong reactions from Jewish groups and the Israeli ambassador to Sweden, Ziv Nevo Kulman.
“I strongly denounce this despicable insult, disrespectful of the memory of Anne Frank,” he said in a tweet. His posting added what appeared to be a screenshot of Fallenkvist’s Instagram post.
Meanwhile, the Sweden Democrats’ media director, Cavalli-Bjorkman, said that the party would take Fallenkvist’s “insensitive & inappropriate” comments seriously as well as launch an internal investigation on the matter.
While it remained not clear what kind of point Fallenkvist wanted to make with her comments on Frank’s diary, she later sent a text message to the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter saying she had been misinterpreted.
Moreover, Sweden Democrats was founded in the 1980s by people who had been active in right-wing extremist groups, including neo-Nazis.
The party emerged as Sweden’s second-largest party in the 11 September election under the leadership of Jimmie Akesson.
On Friday, three Swedish centre-right parties agreed to form a coalition government with the support of the Sweden Democrats that has moved toward mainstream politics but retains a hard line on immigration.
