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Three Germans are facing charges of inciting racial hatred after allegedly burning a paperback copy of the "Diary of Anne Frank" at a far-right festival, authorities said Monday.
The three men are believed to have torched the book, the wrenching account of a Jewish girl hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, along with a US flag at a June summer solstice party held by right-wing extremists, Uwe Hornburg of the prosecutor's office in the eastern city of Magdeburg said.
He said two of the three suspects, aged 24, 27 and 28, belonged to the local far-right organization Heimat Bund Ostelbien in the nearby town of Pretzien, where the festival was held.
The girl's secret journal, published as "The Diary of Anne Frank" after World War II, chronicles her two years in hiding with her family in a cramped attic, terrified of deportation to a Nazi death camp.
Frank, 15, was arrested with her family in Amsterdam on August 4, 1944, and died at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, shortly before its liberation by the Allies at the war's end.
Now translated into over 60 languages, the diary has borne witness to the Holocaust for millions of readers.
dlc/ef/sj
Germany-extremists-Jews-crime
AFP 031521 GMT 07 06
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