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.
1,254 Responses
This is spot on. Thank you for sharing. Studying the Holocaust and reading Anne Frank’s book left me bewildered and shook, in my youth. To witness what is happening now is still bewildering. How can we have “advanced” so much as a species and yet be so primal in our need for power and control. We can send people to space and yet we can’t find a way to co-exist on this planet?! WILD & it’s so OLD. There is a lot of money involved. People are profiting off this: the facilities, the weapons, the entire military industrial complex. How do we turn the dial up on humanity? I’m grateful to have friends and people around me talking peace based economic systems.
In my opinion it isn’t enough to simply read about the way things were and the way things are going now. We need to do something to stop the momentum and nip it in the bud. The question is What can we do to achieve this?
It feels like the politicians on both sides are more concerned with their jobs than they are about taking care of the people.
DJT has the same mesmerizing and persuasive personality that Adolf Hitler did. What is the best and most immediate way to help them lift the blinders that are upon the people who’ve fallen under his spell? Certainly it is NOT buying one more application to put on our phones.
We need to become the change we want to see, yet not one person seems to have the answer as to what that will entail.
I’m doing my best not to feed into the fear and stay calm and collected. Feeling fear gives it momentum and I know that whatever we give our attention to we’ll only get more of it.
So then is the answer ignore what’s going on? I really don’t know.
Vishen, the airBnB we stayed at last year was one block from the Anne Frank house. I had the same thoughts about what she would have seen during her time there.
Thanks for penning this message down.
I almost caved into the fear…
Leaving Africa and living in the US as an international student – just completed my postgraduate studies… and wondering my place is and where in the world I belong? This message came like a warm blanket in the cold.
In spite of the “outsiderness” narrative, I believe that irrespective of where we are from, where we go to, how high or how low… Human beings can only feel the highest level of who they are when they embrace and not repel…
This was such a wonderful, timely read. I’m grateful that I have the opportunity to homeschool my child and that I can ensure she gets access to true history, and to the words of people like Anne Frank. Your story of this experience seems like more than a coincidence. Thanks for sharing.
So many people are deeply thankful for your words. The parallels , the advice, how to figure if a leader is a tyrant. Everything is on point and your courage to voice it is very much appreciated. Unfortunately some people are brainwashed. Do not let negativity, misinterpretation, stop you from voicing what humanity needs to be reminded of…often. Your unapologetic eloquence is very much appreciated.
This message resonates with me deeply. It’s exactly how I feel too, that unity and compassion are the only way forward. Thank you for giving words to what’s in my heart.
Melanie – from Amsterdam
Thanks Vishen for speaking up. We need more people with networks to speak up and help us open the eyes and get back to our humanity.
Vishen, you have the gift of eloquence in your writing. Every word you write is true and strong and inspiring. And I hope it inspires more of us to be caring and compassionate and observant to the atrocities in this world in 2025. And The bravery to stand up against it.
Thank you
Removing people who violate the law isn’t evil; it’s having a healthy boundary. Comparing ICE raids to Nazi Germany is irresponsible and shows no empathy for the law-abiding citizens whose lives and futures have been destroyed by foreign invasion.
There’s no kindness in entering another country illegally, raping the local women and children, increasing violent crime, and fracturing the culture so that a high-trust society is impossible, all while living off the tax dollars of the locals engaged in honest labor. That’s not “unity”, that’s a war-like invasion, chaos, and instability.
Yes, we all need to learn from history and strive to love others; however, we also need healthy boundaries.
Well said
This is one of the best and most concisely powerful messages about this time we live in. I love that you’ve described love as the answer and quoted the most insightful and beautiful words by Anne Frank. Banning books means that free speech is being suppressed. It’s not just the start of things to come. It is already in motion. Bringing this to the world stage, and to me where I sit in Scotland, UK, where this type of info doesn’t travel readily to our news stations. I appreciate your voice of goodness in the world. ❤️
Thank you, Vishen. I was genuinely surprised to see you engage with such a political topic, but your words on Anne Frank were all the more powerful for it. This article was truly affecting…
Such a difficult subject and yet you wrote it so well. I couldn’t agree more, we all have to stand for unity, spreading love instead of hate. We need to look beyond our own doorstep and look at the world instead. It’s a beautiful world and we should take care of it. Not only people, but also animals, nature, … Everyone has his own believe, and that’s fine as long as you don’t hurt anyone. Spread love, joy and compassion, spread kindness and warmth. Let’s act with goodness. I believe that every random act of kindness can create a ripple effect.
I am originally from Germany. Married to an American 45 years ago. I am living in America with dual citizenship. I have 2 sons who have 2 daughters each. Luckily they all have dual citizenship. They are contemplating leaving the US. I am scared of what is going on in America. So many parallels to how Hitler came to power. One small step at a time. Trump is getting old, but Vance might be worse. I do not want to leave the US, I want to vote and keep speaking out. I just dont understand how they can get away with all these lies. I am not worried about myself and my family at this point. We are not black or Hispanic, so we should be ok for now. But many who speak out against him are getting retaliated. At least we have options. I am so upset of what is happening. I have many Republican familie members and friends. They nearly all have become MAGA and are at the same time very very religious. This does not make sense.
Thank you for this message. It is so relevant currently. I am mystified on how our nation became so cruel. People should realize that an assault on a marginalized group is a personal assault.
Thank you again
Vishen, thank you for the courage and resolve to use your voice and platform to engage your audience in the some of the most weighty conversations and realities in our world right now. Thank you for reminding us through the humble wisdom of Anne Frank’s words and story, of the a clarion call to hope, healing, and compassionate action toward what is good and right and true, and toward what ‘becoming more human’ looks like. Together, we can become, create, and overcome. in service of the world’s healing.
Vishan, I have always had great respect for what you have created with Mindvalley. Your openness and ability to bring in a variety of teachings and philosophies have enlightened the world. What I don’t understand in this article you wrote was neglecting the intention of Hamas who use their own people as scapegoats to “eliminate and destroy” the Jewish population in Israel. They pay Palestinian families to go into Israel, kill themselves as they blow up the people. I have seen tapes of how they brainwash their children at an early age to hate and “Kill the Jews” as if it is a prize to paradise. They have a “Mickey Mouse Club” TV show where they teach 5 year olds songs about the glory of killing the Jews and wanting the blood from the Jews. Kids are holding oozies and guns and singing in unison, “Kill the Jews”.
Israel doesn’t want bloodshed. They want to live in peace. Their mandate is to repair the world. When you are surrounded by enemies who want you dead and extinguished, what are you supposed to do? Just let it happen? What about October 7th, kidnapping kids and people of all ages, putting hang grenades in women’s vaginas and blowing them up, gloating? What about taking babies and holding these hostages? What about putting their bunkers in tunnels under hospitals and schools, knowing that if they were bombed, Israel would be blamed, knowing that innocent civilians would die?
All the quotes you said by Hitler could equally be said by Hamas and some Palestinians who actually want Israel to be destroyed. Where are those quotes?
Anytime someone drags out Nazi Germany or Hitler as a comparison, it almost always signals the argument lacks substance. The Holocaust and WWII were unique in scale and horror. Comparing that to whatever we’re debating today isn’t just historically sloppy, it cheapens the memory of actual victims. If your point has merit, you should be able to make it without leaning on the most overused and extreme analogy in history. Otherwise, it’s not really an argument—it’s just shock value, the kind people reach for when they don’t actually know enough about history or the topic we’re discussing
Oh, and check your facts – https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2025/08/fact-check-florida-did-not-ban-diary-of-anne-frank.html
The Diary of Anne Frank was not banned in Florida. A graphic version of the book was banned because it included Anne Frank’s imaginations of sexual desires, which detracted from and “minimized” the impact of reading about Anne’s experiences during the Holocaust. Graphic depictions or even explanations of sexual desire and experience are inappropriate for children to read and have nothing to do with the story of a young girl during a tragic time in history. There is a reason Diary’s are published tactfully. Adding these details specifically in the graphic novel is concerning, but don’t worry, you can still read The Diary of Anne Frank, just not about her 15 year old sexual desires. Everything else is still in there and you’re are welcome to it.
The world is full of good people, but if someone is a criminal, they should be brought to justice. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten what Hamas did and what has been happening in Gaza for so many years.
I agree:
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.
Why does so much violence and fear mongering come from the left then? If it’s the party of unity, why so much hatred and anger towards fellow citizens that disagree with them. I’m independent and having a hard time choosing between one administration putting on a show and another that simply acts like a cult that can do no wrong.
Neither are addressing all the issues and the cult causes way more separation, violence, and destruction than unity. Does everyone just hate republicans so much that they can never see anything good come from them? Even you were lied to about the book ban and didn’t make sure because you trusted the news, but more importantly, why would they lie in the first place?
Anyone who looks deeper could see it was a lie. Maybe they don’t expect you to look deeper. Maybe they prefer you just trust them and never look deeper. To me, that means always look deeper. If you don’t, you won’t know when your spreading lies and adding to the unrest instead of sharing the truth as I know you intend to do.
I know you are on a good path. I can see the experiences of unity you provide, but please consider your words and check your facts. Terror is a real thing and it is happening all over the world. We can only improve if we accept that we all have something to add instead of solidifying 2 parties against each other. Our world is a community, but even if I act like it in my personal life, the media pins us against each other to limit the power of our unity.
We can’t let their lies pull us further apart. I hope to encourage unity with compassion and critical thinking. If we don’t, we are leaving our communities to be devoured by wolves in sheep’s clothing.
You made some great points. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
This was so beautifully written and on point. We need more of this type of messaging blasted through all corners of our universe and through the hearts and minds of those who are closed off. Thank you!
Thank you for this message.
As a Mexican living in the U.S., everything happening with ICE is both alarming and deeply heartbreaking. Families being torn apart, people living in constant fear, targeted simply for the color of their skin—it’s a painful reality many of us face.
Thank you for raising awareness about what we are truly living through in these times.
Those who don’t know their history are bound to repeat it. And now, more than ever, we must awaken and unite—not as separate races, but as children of the same Universe, born of the same Divine Source.
Division is an illusion.
We are all part of the same sacred web. The sun rises for all. Our beloved Mother Earth does not discriminate—she gives her fruits to all her children without exception.
It is time to return to that truth.
To remember that we belong to each other.
To rise in unity, in love.
Thank you for sharing, for speaking truth, and for helping awaken collective consciousness.
Jael Vera
Dear Vishen, I am glad you drew that parallel/comparison today between Anne Frank’s reality and the genocidal reality of Gaza today. We are, as you say, one Humanity and we all should break our silence to help preserve what’s left of the world today and perhaps to help catapult Humanity into a bright-er future. Thank you for speaking for those our fellow human beings who have no voices in the West and whose suffering and anguish is still not heard by those supporting, directly or indirectly, the genocide in Gaza.