Demonstrators holding flags with Nazi swastikas targeted two rural Michigan towns over the weekend, including the site of a community theater production of “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
They also reportedly chanted a pro-Donald Trump slogan.
The actors portraying Anne Frank and her family, in the play produced by the Fowlerville Community Theatre, found out about the five demonstrators when staff notified the audience during the intermission. While that announcement was being made, the performers remained onstage in character as Jewish refugees hiding from the Nazis, according to the theater.
In a statement, the theater said the “understandably shaken” cast “pulled together and finished the performance with strength and professionalism.”
Among those condemning the acts was Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin, the Jewish Democrat who represents the district where the incidents took place, and who won election to the Senate last week.
“It’s more important than ever to fight back against hate, especially at the local level,” Slotkin wrote on X Sunday night. “To the handful of masked, antisemitic creeps waving Nazi flags: Nazis always lose.”
A representative with the Michigan office of the Anti-Defamation League did not return a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment about the incident. On social media, the ADL ‘s national office said it was “disgusted by the far-right extremists who praised Hitler and waved Nazi flags outside of an American Legion hosting the play ‘The Diary of Anne Frank.’”
The American Legion hall in Howell, a city of around 10,000 people east of Lansing, had loaned out its space to the nearby Fowlerville Community Theatre for the show. One member told the local news they agreed to host it because of concern about rising antisemitism.
Neither the American Legion nor representatives with the theater immediately returned JTA requests for comment. “People were shocked, they were appalled,” the American Legion’s past commander Bobby Brite told local news.
“This production centers on real people who lost their lives in the Holocaust, and we have endeavored to tell their story with as much realism as possible,” the theater’s statement continued. “On Saturday evening, things became more real than we expected; the presence of protesters outside gave us a small glimpse of the fears and uncertainty felt by those in hiding.
“As a theatre, we want to make people feel and think. We hope that by presenting Anne’s story, we can help prevent the atrocities of the past from happening again.”
One of the cast members, Becky Frank, who played Anne’s mother Edith, told local reporters the incident was “upsetting,” adding that the pain was compounded by “just knowing the character I was playing, knowing a lot of the research on my character.” Edith Frank died in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, separated from her daughters Anne and Margot, who were murdered at the Bergen-Belsen camp.
On Facebook the night of the performance, Brite shared a video of the demonstration while condemning it. The demonstrators later threw antisemitic slurs at Brite, he told reporters.
“The downside to hosting something like this is you bring out extremists,” he said in the video, recording the small group of five demonstrators with swastika banners across the street. “We are certainly against all acts of extremism, all acts of hate, and hate groups.”
He continued, “We’ve got this play that we’re hosting here at the post. It’s historical and it’s something people can learn from. This is the kind of crap you have to put up with. These individuals are certainly seeking attention.”
In a statement to JTA, the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office said the demonstrators had gone into the American Legion parking lot at first until they were asked to leave the property, at which point they moved across the street. They argued with a passerby but, the sheriff said, “nothing physical transpired and ultimately the parties involved separated.”
The Nazi group, who wore masks emblazoned with the white supremacist symbol “1488,” then left the site of the play and protested in the smaller nearby village of Fowlerville, waving American flags alongside swastikas. In Fowlerville, one witness told local reporters he heard them chanting, “Heil Hitler and Heil Trump.”
This was not the first reported incident this year of white supremacist activity in the Howell area, which has historic ties to the Ku Klux Klan. In July, demonstrators held a “White Lives Matter” rally in downtown Howell replete with chants of “We love Hitler, we love Trump.”
The next month, Donald Trump — now the president-elect — held a campaign rally there.
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