Anne Frank

- statue of Anne Frank by Mari Andriessen, outside the Westerkerk in Amsterdam

This Friday it will be the birthday of Anne Frank. I wonder if that had anything to do with the creepy shoot-out at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC. Here's a bit about it from The Caucus blog at The New York Times ....

Shooting at the Holocaust Museum ....

By Kate Phillips

Gunfire was exchanged between security guards and a gunman at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, setting off an evacuation of the museum and street closures all around the area.

At least two people — the gunman and a security guard — were taken to George Washington University Hospital. The Times’s David Stout has much of the detail as of now. Emergency officials indicated another person may have been slightly injured by breaking glass.

Visitors to the museum who have been interviewed on television described the scene as chaotic, with people yelling to dive to the floor as at least five gunshots were exchanged. Officials are asserting that the gunman appeared to be operating alone.

In addition, the suspect, James Von Brunn, 88, has a Web site that is anti-Semitic, called the Holy Western Empire.

F.Y.I., the Holocaust Museum is heavily guarded and tourists go through metal detectors. It seems that he may not have gotten as far as the metal detectors.

Oddly enough, various dignitaries, including Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., were expected to attend a play tonight by Janet Langhart Cohen at the museum. “Anne and Emmett” is an imaginary conversation after death between Anne Frank and Emmett Till, a merging of the minds between the Holocaust and the racist lynchings in the South. The Washington Post’s Courtland Milloy wrote about the play earlier this month.

You can visit the page for Anne Frank the Writer / An Unfinished Story, an exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum


- the (reconstructed) bookcase that covered the entrance to the Achterhuis (hiding place) at Anne Frank House, the museum in the Netherlands