Anne Frank was 15 years old when she died in a Nazi concentration camp. Yet her words outlived her body. Words scribbled in a diary from a secret attic in Amsterdam became one of the world’s most powerful mirrors.
This summer, I found myself in Amsterdam for Mindvalley U. By chance, my Airbnb was on the street next to Anne Frank’s house. Each morning, I’d step outside and see the same canals, the same cobblestones, and the same rooftops Anne may have glimpsed in stolen moments when she dared peek out from her hiding place.
A few mornings later, I opened the news and froze. The Diary of Anne Frank had just been banned in Florida schools under new book-ban laws. Imagine that. In 2025, one of the most important human documents ever written—the testimony of a teenage Jewish girl hiding from Nazi genocide—was deemed “inappropriate” for children to read.
The synchronicity hit me hard. I was standing before the building where those words were written. Words that survived Anne, even though she did not. Words that outlived war, genocide, and cruelty—only to be silenced again today by politicians who fear truth more than hatred.
And this got me thinking.
If Anne Frank were alive today, what would she say about America? About Israel & Gaza?
What I’m about to share may feel uncomfortable—but Anne’s words demand we face discomfort.
Who was Anne Frank
Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt in 1929. When the Nazis rose to power, her family fled to Amsterdam, hoping to escape persecution. In 1942, when deportations began, they went into hiding in a small annex behind her father’s office. For over two years, Anne, her sister Margot, her parents Otto and Edith, and four others lived in silence, relying on the courage of Dutch friends who smuggled them food and news.
Anne wasn’t just a symbol. She was a teenager—funny, sharp, sometimes rebellious, and always observant. She dreamed of being a journalist. She once wrote, “I want to go on living even after my death.” And, tragically, she did—not through her life, but through her words.
In August 1944, they were betrayed. The Gestapo stormed the annex. The Franks were deported to Westerbork, then Auschwitz, and finally Anne and Margot to Bergen-Belsen. In early 1945, both sisters died of typhus—just weeks before liberation. Anne was 15.
Only Otto Frank survived. After the war, Miep Gies, one of the helpers, handed him Anne’s diary. He published it, fulfilling her dream. Today, it has sold over 30 million copies and been translated into more than 70 languages.
Anne’s body was silenced. But her voice became immortal.
Anne’s words in today’s world
Anne once wrote:
“Terrible things are happening outside. Poor, helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.”
She was describing Nazi roundups in Amsterdam.
But doesn’t that sound eerily like ICE raids in America today? Parents taken in the middle of the night. Children left crying, bewildered, abandoned. Different time, different uniforms—but the same cruelty.
Anne also wrote:
“We are chained to one spot, without rights, a thousand obligations… waiting for the inevitable end.”
That could be the voice of Gaza today. Entire families locked in. Starved. Bombed. Denied freedom of movement. Children asking, “Why must we suffer simply because of who we are?”
Her words, written 80 years ago, read like dispatches from the present. History is not past. It is a loop—unless we break it.
A hard, controversial mirror
Anne’s diary teaches us to look at cruelty honestly, no matter where it comes from. And one thing history proves: atrocities don’t start with bullets. They start with words.
Dehumanizing language always comes first.
So let’s talk about Gaza, as uncomfortable as this may seem.
Consider the echoes:
- Nazi leadership (1943): Heinrich Himmler at Posen: “I am referring here to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people….”
- Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (2023): On the Palestinian town of Huwara: “[Huwara] should be wiped out. I think the State of Israel should do it.”
- Hitler, Mein Kampf: Jews as “the typical parasite, a sponger who, like an infectious bacillus, keeps spreading.” Nazi propaganda routinely cast Jews as vermin.
- Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (2023): Announcing a siege of Gaza: “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel… We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
- Nazi propaganda (Goebbels echoing Hitler): Jews blamed collectively for war, threatened with “extermination.”
- Israeli President Isaac Herzog (2023): “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible….” — words widely criticized as endorsing collective punishment.
- Nazi euphemisms: “Evacuation” as code for extermination.
- Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu (2023): Suggesting a nuclear strike on Gaza was “one of the options.”
Different contexts. Different scales. But the same pattern.
Dehumanize → Justify → Destroy.
Anne Frank’s words remind us: when we hear this language, it is never “just rhetoric.” It is the runway to cruelty.
You see, cruelty always begins the same way: when leaders tell us to fear “the other.”
Fear the immigrant.
Fear the refugee.
Fear the neighbor who looks different.
Fear the people beyond your border.
That is the oldest political trick in the book. And it works—unless we refuse to buy it.
Anne Frank didn’t write her diary so we could cry in museums. She wrote it so we could recognize her suffering in others—and have the courage to stop it.
Why giving people a chance matters
This message hit me with even greater force because, while in Amsterdam, I also had a chance encounter.
I bumped into a young Syrian man who once worked for me back in 2016. At the time, he was a refugee in Malaysia. He and his friend had escaped a country torn apart by war. One had seen his home blown to rubble. The other had lost a brother when a bomb fell on the very place his brother was resting.
Both had lived through horrors most of us can barely imagine. And yet, when I met them, I didn’t just see refugees. I saw brilliant young minds. I saw hope, determination, and resilience.
That year, I had an idea for a new learning model called Quest and needed someone to build the app. These two young Syrians built it in record time. That app became the Mindvalley app—today used by millions worldwide and even featured in 200,000 Apple stores on the iPad.
Yes, our app was built by Syrians. Yes, it was built by refugees who were given a chance.
Anne never got her chance. But when we give people that chance, look what can happen.
This is why I am so adamant about this message. When politicians tell you to fear refugees, or immigrants, or minorities, they’re not just lying. They are robbing humanity of its future.
The rule we must all live by
If there’s one rule we must all live by, it’s this:
The moment a leader tells you to fear refugees, minorities, or immigrants, you are looking at a tyrant.
Do not believe them. Do not reward their fear with your silence—or your vote.
Because fear divides. And division always leads to cruelty.
What the world needs now is unity.
Unity across stripes, colors, races, and ethnicities. Unity across cultures, religions, and especially across borders.
Because the only way we solve the greatest challenges facing humanity—from climate change to war to poverty—is to remember this truth:
We are one humanity.
And kindness cannot stop at the invisible lines of race, religion, or border.
The higher vision
Anne Frank once wrote:
“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
That may be the most extraordinary line ever written. She believed it while hiding from people who wanted her dead.
If Anne could believe in human goodness then, we can believe in it now.
Let’s prove her right.
Let’s choose compassion over cruelty.
Let’s stand up for one another across borders.
Let’s silence the voices of fear not by shouting back but by choosing unity again and again.
Because Anne’s diary isn’t just a warning.
It’s a torch.
And it’s in our hands now.
So here’s what we can collectively do.
Stand for unity. Across color. Across race. Across borders. Across religions.
When you hear fear, answer with love.
When you hear division, answer with solidarity.
When a politician uses scapegoating, vote the other way.
The only way to honor Anne is to prove her right—that humanity is good at heart.
And that goodness becomes real when we act.
Because history doesn’t just happen to us. It is written by our choices—and our silence.
I’d like to hear from you: Drop a comment below—let’s create a conversation around unity, compassion, and what it means to stand for humanity in our time.
1,231 Responses
Thank you for using your platform to speak up.
Thank you, Vishen, for your poignant message, and for challenging us to speak out against the historic atrocities which are being repeated today.
Vishen, Thank you so very much for having the courage to speak out! So many people would have kept silent and worried about the possible impact to their business of, “getting political.” I agree with every word you wrote, and I’m even more proud of being a part of Mindvalley. Keep up the great work!
Thank you for having the courage to speak truth to power. Fear and violence go hand in hand. Each one of us needs to address the root of fear, and hence the root of violence that operates within us.
When we learn the way to dismantle that automatic and subconscious mechanism which leads us to commit acts of violence, through doing our own inner and community-based work, we stand a chance of becoming peaceful with others, not only to those who are like us, but also whom we experience as enemies, aggressors, and antagonizers—whoever that may be for us.
I have survived an intense amount of hatred and violence directed against me in the place I grew up in and from the common abuses of systemic power.
While life continues to be a daily struggle as I have chronic injuries and untold pain from the things that happened to me, I strive each day to live and internalize the principles of non-violence in thought, word, and action.
I often fail in thought, sometimes in word, but in action I do succeed. I choose not to repeat any harms I perceive being done to me.
I can choose not to retaliate, and hence to not add further to the cycle of harm being performed.
I understand how important it is to remove myself from constant contact with the aggressor. This is not always possible. For example right now I live with someone who is a bully and I can’t afford to move. Neither is there any other housing available to me at present.
So what do I do? I stay in my room or go out as much as I can. I leave early and come home late. I avoid unnecessary conversation because I don’t want to invite the contempt in their voice to be directed at me.
However I am polite and “chill”, and non-reactive when I do address them. I don’t like living like this as it doesn’t feel like a healthy home but I hope that soon a chance will come for me to move on to something better for my mental and physical health.
While I feel deep anger towards this bullying and to aggressors who in fact are all around in my daily life, at work and just around in my community, I choose not to amplify and act on those harsh feelings, except as needed only to protect life and limb.
And that is where the most misunderstanding is happening in current mass conflict events. Violence of the most extreme form is being justified as a means of protecting a people.
Violence will not resolve that way but will perpetuate and escalate conflict and cause more and more hatred and aggression to be unleashed.
I don’t pretend to have the solution for what is happening at scale in the world today. I can speak against the injustice I perceive and I do. But it feels like an inadequate response.
I know that what I can choose in my practice of daily living—and this is not at all easy—is not to react with aggression to an aggressor who is attacking.
I think of them instead as an angry bear with a thorn in their side. They may be violent and flailing and attacking me without any justifiable reason. But what choice or action on my part will bring on the ease of suffering into the situation, and also protect my own and also their life?
An imperfect analogy it is of course, but it does help me to diffuse the situation at work with a toxic angry boss. I’m also looking for another job. But in the meantime I have to deal with toxic behaviour of a boss which is often out of control and inappropriate to the context.
The question is: how do we de-escalate? The more creative a response we can find to that question and then choose to live that way, in non-violence, and non-harming, the more chance we have of recovery from the aftermath of the generational repeat cycles of violence and trauma.
I have deep empathy for the people of Gaza even though most of them cheered and danced on 10/7. But I’m very unclear as to why, in a war, you feel it’s the responsibility of the attacked (Israel) to feed its attacker (Palestinians)? That seems insane to me. If someone is holding your child hostage, is it your responsibility to make them all their meals until they return your child? To place all the responsibility of feeding their attackers on Israel when there are other Muslim countries Gaza shares borders with that want nothing to do with helping is crazy. Odd request from the world that never made any other countries fighting wars to feed them.
“when leaders tell us to fear “the other” – haha yeah cause liberals never do this, right? Its their political playbook every 4 yrs you hypocrite! Save your nonsense
Time to unsubscribe. Comparing Ice Raids removing criminal aliens who came in thru a negligent policy, to Nazi brutality? “eerily similar” Are you dumb? WOW you have some nerve. Or, maybe you are shielded in a wealthy community like Martha`s Vineyard that refuses to accept any of these people. Go back to your gated community and virtue signal there where the negative impact is not felt. Ridiculous.
First, ICE enforcement is not Nazi persecution. Nazis targeted Jews for extermination based on their identity. ICE enforces laws against people who violated immigration rules — a legal status issue, not genocide. Illegal immigration has real costs: U.S. taxpayers spend over $150 billion annually on services tied to illegal immigration. Enforcing borders is the duty of sovereign nations, not an act of racial hatred.
Second, Gaza is not Anne Frank’s attic. Anne was a powerless child hiding from a state determined to annihilate her people. Gaza is controlled by Hamas — a militant group whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction. Documented evidence shows Hamas uses hospitals, schools, and neighborhoods as shields, launches rockets from civilian areas, and diverts humanitarian aid into terror tunnels. Civilian suffering in Gaza is tragic, but Hamas bears responsibility for embedding its fighters among civilians. Israel’s actions, however controversial, cannot be equated with Nazi extermination.
Third, the post cherry-picks. It quotes inflammatory Israeli leaders while ignoring Hamas’ genocidal rhetoric. It shares one refugee success story while omitting the economic, safety and social strains uncontrolled migration creates for millions of host citizens. This selective lens paints all enforcement or self-defense as tyranny — which is not fact, but bias.
Finally, we must guard against Holocaust trivialization. Anne Frank’s story reminds us of the unique horror of industrial genocide. Equating it with modern border policy or counter-terrorism not only distorts present realities but also dishonors Holocaust victims by diluting history’s lessons.
Anne Frank’s diary is a call to human dignity, not a blank check for false comparisons. Compassion matters — but so do truth, law, and security.
Thankyou very much Vishen for having such a great heart and mind as well.
Thank you Vishen. You’ve said what we, all right principled humanitarians are thinking… in one way or another our lives are affected, negatively, daily by what we are informed of via the ‘news’, of daily atrocities somewhere and of poor people fleeing to a better life only to be unwelcome. I am, by degrees, insulted and appalled.. then, in order to have a decent day, I push that feeling away to pay attention to something positive, in order to stop being furious at it all and which does not have these negative effects. You, however, took the time to sit down and write profoundly about what is going on.. you speak for me and I thank you.. let us all get together across the world and protest peacefully but loudly that we love every living thing on OUR planet which we all have a duty to keep well and healthy. I am so pleased you have spoken up… everything you say is right and inspirational… it has made my day to read your words thank you again.
Sheila
@lostbutfearless
I am outraged by the article titled *“Anne Frank, ICE, and Gaza: Why her diary is more urgent than ever”* published on August 26, 2025, by Vishen on the Mindvalley blog ([blog.mindvalley.com](https://blog.mindvalley.com/newsletter-unity/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)).
The hypocrisy and antisemitism could not be clearer. The author shamelessly invokes the diary of Anne Frank, a Jewish girl murdered by the Nazis, while deliberately ignoring the real and undeniable comparison: the Nazi education of hate and the indoctrination of Hamas.
Even worse, he brazenly ignores the horrific massacres of October 7 in Israel—the murders, the rapes, the kidnappings of civilians. By refusing to acknowledge these atrocities, he is not calling for peace. He is giving legitimacy to terror. He is encouraging it.
This is not “unity.” This is dangerous antisemitic propaganda dressed in spiritual language. Stripping Anne Frank of her Jewish identity while erasing Jewish suffering today is not just a distortion of history, it is an insult to every victim of antisemitism, past and present.
Let’s be clear: Hamas and the Nazis are cut from the same cloth. Both raise generations on hatred, on dehumanization, and on the dream of exterminating an entire people. Anyone who refuses to say this truth is complicit.
And Vishen—by writing and publishing this—you have crossed the line into outright antisemitism. Your words are not “healing.” They are enabling hatred and violence.
I call on every Mindvalley subscriber reading this: take a moral stand. Cancel your subscription, just as I have. No spiritual community should normalize narratives that erase Jewish suffering while legitimizing terror.
Vishen,
You speak of unity and yet you use the immature ‘hook’ of Nazi Germany and Hitler to make your points. This just cheapens your message and reeks of divisiveness clothed in compassion. Where is the higher consciousness that Mind Valley once stood for? This post sounds noble but is the usual rhetoric spoken as if it is truth. PS. This is clearly AI generated and is like a ‘Hallmark card’ of canned wisdom. I suggest that you do some soul searching and return to your roots in consciousness rather than more blah blah blah lectures about politics and beliefs.
You have muddied the waters of Midvalley with your personal and political agenda. sad and very disappointing
Thank you Vishen , very moving and eloquently put. It seems we are now in a world where if you have an opinion that goes against the mainstream one you are considered a conspiracy theorist or anti x y or z. To speak out against genocide – no matter who is the perpetrator – is simply speaking out against the violation of the most basic principles of humanity and international law. No matter the political or historical disputes involved, targeting civilians, children, denying people’s right to exist or calling for their extermination is never acceptable. If we as a race care about justice and peace, we must recognise the equal worth of every human life – Palestinian and Israeli alike. We need to find a way to work towards solutions grounded in human rights, in dignity and coexistence, not dehumanisation or mass violence. I too like Anne Frank, believe that people are good at heart, and like you said Vishen, we need to uphold her belief and yes, choose unity over fear, anger and cruelty.
I like this initiative very much, because I agree 💯 that we all can act.
And I mean regardless whether we habe political influence or not.
Even when we sit in a group, we can lead with our thoughts and our behavior.
Wen can show and speak out that we stand for a world / a place, where we respect people.
Where we do not think about the colour of the skin, the religion or the origin … or whatever.
Peaceful behaviour, true kindness and understanding can be shown in a moment, in a situation,
in our everyday life. We decide how we think and behave.
An I honestely hope, that we learn as humanity, that we develop.
And it starts with each and everyone of us.
Wow, I was so touched upon reading your lines, Vishen! I never read Anne’s diary, but I will read it, because I see that it is a book like Mindvalley, it’s lifelong, and eternal! Thank you so much for your letter, I didn’t really knew what’s happening
behind the curtains, but now I see where this situation is headed!!! It’s so sad that the jewish government behaves like those who mistreated them 🙁
Thank you for highlighting examples from the past! Great article.
Well said, Vishen. It’s refreshing to hear a truly transparent opinion expressed with clarity in an era where the loudest voices often prevail. One would expect that by now humanity had reached the maturity to refrain from any actions that could even resemble potential genocide. Yet the reality is that some individuals still manage to manipulate global consciousness, while too many remain hesitant to voice their true opinion—choosing instead to passively let things unfold.
It is time to speak up, to stop accepting what happens without reaction. Thank you, Vishen, for having the courage to raise your voice. The world needs leaders like you. With respect and gratitude
I am so shocked about you comparing jewish israeli people with nazis!!! I live in Israel 27 years. Do you have any idea how it feels to live in a country under hamas bombing all the time? Do you have any idea how the hostages families are suffering? Do you have any idea how I raised my children always under the terrorism of Hamas? Your letter Vinshem is an abuse of your power and I feel ashame that I am part of Mindvalley comunity.
Thank you Vishen.