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Argentine Jews riled by Anne Frank image in popular talent show

“To use Anne Frank as the background for a song by a woman who refuses to stay at home is to bring the banalization of the Holocaust to its extreme expression,” the Anne Frank House said in a statement.

By David Hellerman, World Israel News

The producer of “Showmatch,” Argentina’s most popular talent show, apologized for a background image of Anne Frank that appeared during a Friday performance, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported.

Sofia Jimenez was performing “I’m Not That Woman,” a song about empowered women. As Jimenez sang the words, “I’m not that type of woman who doesn’t leave the house,” Frank’s image appeared for several seconds.

Other prominent women whose faces appeared in the background during the song included Oprah Winfrey and Mother Theresa, the report said.

Anne Frank was a Dutch-German Jewish girl whose family, along with several other Jews, hid from the Nazis in a concealed annex in an Amsterdam building for two years. The teenager kept a diary during that time. In 1944, they were betrayed to the Nazis and rounded up. Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

Of the eight people who hid in the annex, only Anne’s father, Otto, survived the war. He went on to publish the book, “The Diary of a Young Girl,” which has sold more than 30 million copies and is now available in 70 different languages.

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The Anne Frank House of Buenos Aires, which recreated the Frank family’s hideout, condemned Showmatch.

“To use Anne Frank as the background for a song by a woman who refuses to stay at home is to bring the banalization of the Holocaust to its extreme expression,” the Anne Frank House said in a statement, JTA reported. “Anne Frank did not stay at home because she was a submissive woman, but had to hide to escape the persecution of the Nazi machinery.”

Showmatch host Marcelo Tinelli and the producers apologized for the imagery during the show’s following episode on Tuesday. They also visited the Buenos Aires Anne Frank House.

“I’m taking responsibility for that mistake. I’m far from trivializing the Holocaust,” Tinelli said, according to JTA. ” I personally visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam four times. I’m a father that sent one of his sons to the ORT [Jewish] school, I know very well the magnificent education that the Jewish community has in Argentina. I’m expressing my sincere apologies.”