Known for projecting an antisemitic message onto the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, a renowned American neo-Nazi has been deported to the Netherlands, where he will face trial.
The home where Anne Frank hid during the Holocaust was laser-projected with a message in February, and Robert Wilson is suspected of being responsible.
A widely refuted antisemitic conspiracy theory claimed that Frank’s well-known diary is a fabrication since it was initially written using a ballpoint pen, which was not created until after World War II.
The letter claimed to be from the “inventor of the ballpoint pen,” a reference to this. Frank was found by the Nazis in 1944, and the following year, he passed away in the Bergen-Belsen detention camp. She hid in a house that is now a museum.
Early in October is when Wilson is expected to appear in court for the first time. He is a major member of the Florida-based neo-Nazi group the Goyim Defense League and is originally from Canada.
Between 2016 and 2021, Wilson resided in the San Diego neighborhood of Chula Vista, California, where he is alleged to have assaulted a neighbor and hurled homophobic epithets at them.
Wilson was charged with posting an antisemitic flag over a San Diego freeway overpass shortly after the alleged assault.
Before he could be tried for the assault’s underlying hate crime, he left the country.
Since that time, Wilson has primarily resided in Poland, where he also has citizenship, and there are records of his engaging in a number of antisemitic crimes, including making derogatory signs toward the Anti-Defamation League outside the Auschwitz concentration camp in 2022.
Jon Minadeo Jr., the founder of the Goyim Defense League, also appeared in the photograph, which, according to Minadeo, resulted in his arrest by Polish officials.
According to reports, Wilson visited Amsterdam a few months later, around the time of the tragedy at the Anne Frank House.
A team of Dutch citizen sleuths committed to exposing terrorist activity learned of his presence there.
His arrest in Poland was the result of a European arrest warrant issued by the Netherlands in the spring.
He was detained and told not to leave the country while the investigation was ongoing. Wilson, though, was detained once more in July while attempting to leave for Canada from a German airport.
After being detained in Germany, he was moved to Amsterdam in late August.
The Netherlands specifically outlawed Holocaust denial statements in July, but Dutch prosecutors did not say what they would be accusing Wilson of in their news release announcing Wilson’s extradition.
According to Willem Wagenaar, an extremist researcher who works at the Anne Frank House, the message’s ambiguity will serve as a “test case” for the Netherlands.
In the Netherlands, is this a crime or is this protected speech? “, said Wagenaar. “It lies in the ambiguous space between. So, we shall investigate.
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