Far-right Sweden Democrats official suspended after Anne Frank comment

A Sweden Democrats official was suspended by the far-right party for making degrading comments about the Jewish Holocaust victim known for her diary, Anne Frank.

In an Instagram posting that has now been deleted, Rebecka Fallenkvist called Frank “immoral”, among other things, according to 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 posting by Fallenkvist, a 26-year-old head of television programming for the Sweden Democrats, prompted strong reactions from Jewish groups and the Israeli ambassador to Sweden, Ziv Nevo Kulman.

“I strongly condemn this despicable insult, disrespectful of the memory of Anne Frank,” he said in a tweet. His posting included what appeared to be a screenshot of Fallenkvist’s Instagram post.

The Sweden Democrats’ media director, Oskar Cavalli-Bjorkman, told the Swedish news agency TT late Saturday that the party would take Fallenkvist’s “insensitive and inappropriate” comments seriously and launch an internal investigation on the matter.

While it remained unclear 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.

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.