In the Netherlands, a court in Amsterdam has sentenced a 42-year-old man, Robert V., to two months in prison for projecting anti-Semitic text onto the building where Jewish girl Anne Frank lived, famous for her diary during World War II.

According to SVT , the projection contained text in both English and Dutch that read, "Anne Frank, inventor of the ballpoint pen." In this context, V. sought to dispute the authenticity of Anne Frank's diary, arguing that she could not have written it herself.

At the beginning of October, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service demanded a six-month prison sentence and a five-year ban on entering Amsterdam for Robert V.

The Amsterdam court recognized that this projection could be seen as Holocaust denial, given the significant symbolic value of Anne Frank's diary in recognition of the persecution of Jews. The court also found substantial evidence that Robert V. had come to Amsterdam from Poland to carry out this plan.

During the court hearing in early October, the court decided that V. could be considered free from punishment, as he had already spent 90 days in pretrial detention.

On additional charges, Robert V. was also suspected of creating and disseminating a video of this projection, using a drone and posting it on the internet via the messaging service Telegram. The video included discriminatory and anti-Semitic texts set to the tune of the song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by the British band Tears for Fears.

The court could not establish who exactly had published the video and acquitted V. in this regard. However, the court acknowledged that there was significant evidence that the suspect had been involved in creating the video.

The anti-Semitic context of the projection's text is related to the so-called "ballpoint pen theory." In the 1980s, detached sheets of paper written with a ballpoint pen were found in Anne Frank's diary. Extremists considered this evidence of the diary's forgery, claiming that ballpoint pens did not exist in the Netherlands during World War II. However, researchers suggest that these sheets written with a ballpoint pen were accidentally left in the diary by a researcher in the 1960s and do not diminish the authenticity of the diary, as previously claimed by right-wing extremists.

It is also known that Robert V. had been previously arrested in Poland for promoting fascism and spreading hatred, including actions with hateful and discriminatory slogans near the Auschwitz concentration camp gates. He also faces criminal charges in San Diego, where he is accused of active involvement in right-wing extremist circles in the United States.