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.
1,234 Responses
I’m super proud of you, Vishen. 🙏🏿
What an interesting contrast Vishen. Between a teenage girl who had to face the actions of the world of the adults and of nations with their agendas. A girl forced to mature within the impending horrors and of the fate of her own kind. On the other hand, is the seemingly unperturbed era of classroom education where curriculum is drafted with its own agendas, however perfectly intent or imperfectly executed.
If we take the 15 year old between both eras they may be too different in the level of maturity in respect to life and itd brutal consequences. What goes into the decision to ban , I can only think of it as a measure against provocation of a topic , regardless of whether it was right or wrong. Perhaps, as a learning material it was fair. But as a material that could aggravate a situation with no clear direction of use, it would seem to be a strategic decision.
Perhaps the question here would then be – what should the young ones pay attention to and are they ripe for it. This then begs, what is the core purpose of education.
Jen, Anne Frank’s diary is not just another “provocative” book in a curriculum- it is the testimony of a Jewish teenager hiding from a regime that set out to annihilate her entire people. To compare that to modern policy debates or to frame it as a question of “strategy” strips away the truth of the Holocaust.
And when Vishen uses Anne’s story to draw false parallels with Gaza, it becomes even more dangerous. Hamas is not Anne Frank- Hamas is the ideology of those who hunted her. Their charter openly calls for the destruction of Jews, and on October 7 they proved it with massacre, rape, and kidnapping. Education should open eyes, not confuse history with propaganda. If we want young people to learn anything from Anne Frank, it must be the importance of standing up against hate and refusing to allow lies to take root.
It is a different situation. The Jews in Europe were not teaching the children that Europeans were vermin to be killed. The Palestinians are teaching their children to kill the Jews and Israelis and in fact to die as hero’s doing so. The Jews of Europe did not attack Europeans but were consistently attacked well before Hitler and displaced time and time again over hundreds of years. The Palestinians attacked Israel on October 7 through tunnels built under hospitals and schools hiding weapons, built with money that could have housed and fed the citizens. They teach and vow to wipe out Israel and Jews. Is there a realistic and safe way for Israel? I do not have the answer but I don’t think you do either or you would publish that. I am troubled by the situation as a Jew but ask myself how i would feel if my daughters had been raped and killed on October 7 while dancing at a music festival similar to the ones you hold.
You’re one more propagandist of Hamas.
You know nothing of what’s occurring there. Shame on you and shame on your hate. Comparing the words of Israeli right wing politicians to the Nazi movement.
You’ve proven your illegitimacy and your bias. Veiled as compassion you’re no different than the rest of the ignorant and hateful you are trying to sympathize with.
Excellent … I wonder if he will retract this news letter… honestly enough idiots on the streets that support terrorists Maybe they should go in these arab countries and help with reconstruction..
Vishen your words, or perhaps Anne Frank’s words hit me hard. I woke up this morning reading about the atrocities that our government, here in the United States* are doing right now even as I write this. Our new ‘Hitler’ and his entourage are quickly destroying our government and our lives will follow suit. History does repeat itself unless a conscious choice is made and followed through.
Brilliantly expressed, resonates deeply in a very real frightful way.
I hear what you are saying and as a black man in America I fear for my children and my children’s children. But the very people who are being victimized by these American atrocities and that’s what they are, are they very people when given a choice, chose this road. I remember all of the protests at Kamala’s rallys by people who are now the victims. So I cannot and will not support those who put my grandchildren’s future at stake. I remember her saying that all of theses things were put in writing, but they chose not to head the warnings. So the only thing I can do now is protect what is mine and when they come for me, fight with every fiber in my being. You should be reminding those protestors, etc., how they betrayed their own and how they betrayed the human race. Yes, the lesson of Anne Frank’s words is a frightning reminder of what can happen when we put, racism, sexism, and xonophiobia over common sense. God help us.
SOOOO untrue! Is this a leftist site? Because knowledge is definitely missing!
Kudos to you, Vishen, for such a relevant and timely message. THIS is the reminder we need to move this country forward to secure the blessings of liberty! Thank you so much.
Actually very wrong and lack of knowledge! Surprising and disappointing. Not everybody can see through the lies … Thank God for Trump!
Are you absolutely nuts!
I wholeheartedly agree.
Many of the leaders in our current government either have a criminal record, have engaged in some questionable acts but were not prosecuted, or have simply acted without integrity or character.
We need to stand together against the darkness that is taking over our country born out of the same ugly racism that engulfed Nazi Germany.
Hello Vishen
Could I share your blog on my Facebook page? You took the words right of my mouth. Well done for speaking up
Saida Bello (Bristol UK)
You probably refer to a fantasy or a twisted understanding of the history and truth. Did you just missed the patriots protests in Bristol UK? You could’ve learned something there!
Let’s be clear. Sharing this blog isn’t about “unity”- it’s about spreading antisemitic propaganda dressed up as compassion. Comparing Israel to Nazis while ignoring Hamas’s charter and the atrocities of October 7 is not love, it is hate disguised as virtue. Putting this on your Facebook only fuels more lies and more antisemitism. If you truly cared about humanity, you wouldn’t be promoting a message that erases Jewish suffering and endangers Jewish lives today.
“Because history doesn’t just happen to us. It is written by our choices — and our silence.”
Thank you for pointing out that our omissions and actions have consequences.
Yes, our omissions and actions have consequences- and that is exactly why it is so dangerous when millions are fed distortions that equate Israel with Nazis and erase the truth of Hamas’s October 7 massacre. Silence in the face of those lies is not neutrality, it is complicity. If history is written by choices, then our choice must be to speak the truth loudly: Hamas seeks the destruction of Jews, and spreading misinformation only fuels that hate.
Well said and 100% spot on. Now, if only those would would tear us apart would take these words to heart.
Thank you. And this is exactly why misinformation is so dangerous. When millions are told that Israel is like the Nazis or that October 7 was just part of a “cycle,” it gives people permission to tear Jewish lives apart with hate. Words like that don’t bring peace, they put us all in greater danger. Real healing begins when truth is spoken and hate is rejected clearly.
Exactly. The tragedy is that those who most need to hear the truth are the ones twisting it into hate. When millions are fed lies that compare Israel to Nazis or erase Hamas’s atrocities, it gives them permission to tear Jewish lives apart. We cannot let that stand. Standing strong in truth is how we protect our people and honor those who were massacred on October 7.
Applause!
Thank you, Vishen, for your courageous and heartfelt stand for truth in this powerful article. Your words reminded me of three vital truths that resonate deeply:
The Enduring Power of Anne Frank’s Words
1. Anne Frank’s diary transcends time—her voice surviving war, hatred, and now attempts to silence it once again with a book ban in Florida. Her words are not just history; they are a living mirror reflecting ongoing struggles, urging us to confront uncomfortable realities honestly.
The Danger of Dehumanizing Language and Fear
The comparison between past atrocities and current rhetoric highlights the alarming pattern of dehumanization that precedes an is concurrent with cruelty. Calling out how fear of “the other” is used politically as a weapon is a crucial reminder that we must always stand vigilant against such tactics and refuse to be divided by them.
The Call for Unity, Compassion, and Action
The story of the Syrian refugees who contributed to building something meaningful, alongside Anne’s belief in the inherent goodness of people, inspires hope. Your call to respond to fear with love, to reject division, and to choose solidarity is an urgent and beautiful vision for our shared humanity.
Thank you again, Vishen, for standing up so bravely for truth, compassion, and unity. Your words shine a light that challenges us all to act with courage and kindness.
P.S. This is such a refreshing difference from your past post that seemed so supported of DJT.
What sort of twisted mind one has to believe this article! Total RUBBISH and nothing to do with history and reality
“What sort of twisted mind one has to believe this article! Total RUBBISH and nothing to do with history and reality”
Totally agree with this comment
Must get out of Mindvalley
Exactly right. This article twists Anne Frank’s words and history to push a false narrative. Israel left Gaza in 2005, but instead of peace Hamas took over, built terror tunnels under schools and hospitals, and launched thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians. On October 7, they carried out atrocities- raping women, burning families alive, and kidnapping babies and grandparents. Comparing Israel to Nazis while ignoring all of this is not only rubbish, it is dangerous propaganda that fuels antisemitism worldwide. Thank you for calling it out.
Nancy, what you call “truth” here is actually distortion. Anne Frank’s words should never be twisted to compare Israel with Nazis. That comparison erases both the Holocaust and the reality of Hamas. Israel left Gaza in 2005, dismantling every community and withdrawing all its soldiers. Hamas then took over, writing in its charter that “Israel will exist until Islam will obliterate it,” and calling openly for the murder of Jews everywhere. Since then, they have fired more than 20,000 rockets into Israel, built terror tunnels under schools and hospitals, and indoctrinated children to hate and kill Jews. On October 7, they proved their intent again- raping women, burning families alive, mutilating bodies, and kidnapping babies and grandparents.
When you celebrate an article that ignores all of this, you are not standing for unity, you are helping to spread propaganda that fuels antisemitism and endangers Jewish lives everywhere.
If we truly want compassion and solidarity, we must begin with honesty: Hamas is holding both Palestinians and Israelis hostage to its ideology of hate. Unity built on lies is not unity at all.
Nancy, what you call “truth” here is actually distortion. Anne Frank’s diary is not a mirror for every conflict — it is the testimony of a Jewish girl hunted for extermination. To compare Israel’s fight for survival with Nazi atrocities erases both the Holocaust and Hamas’s openly declared mission to destroy Jews.
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and instead of building peace Hamas turned it into a base for terror — firing thousands of rockets, building tunnels under schools and hospitals, and indoctrinating children to hate Jews. On October 7 they proved again that their goal is not freedom, but genocide — through massacre, rape, and kidnapping.
When this reality is ignored, and Israel is compared to Nazis, it does not promote unity, it fuels antisemitism and puts Jewish lives in danger worldwide. Real compassion begins with truth, and the truth is that Hamas, not Israel, keeps Palestinians and Israelis trapped in endless suffering.
Thank you, Vishen,
I appreciate your honesty and courage in naming what so many feel but hesitate to say.
I’m grateful for your voice.
This was very powerful. Thank you for sharing. I was just having a conversation with a friend about the phrase “history always repeats itself”.
it terrifies me to think that we have not learned from history but instead perpetuate it.
Thank you for beautifully speaking these words in a way that completely aligns with the way I’d like to put words and messages into the world. Stating truths without aggression and division but with heart and unity.
Thank you for sharing your vision. We strongly need to give power to our words, to explain what’s happening and to defend our humanity by acting like humans, united, caring, loving, defending our empathy and solidarity.
Thank you for your beautiful words!
Thank you for adding your voice to this conversation. I believe we are at a tipping point in humanity. The insanity has become unbearable. Using our voices to shine the light on all of the injustice is our greatest weapon and will be the catalyst to push the pendulum back in alignment. My voice will not be silenced.
Thank you Vishen
This sharing is brave and moving. It is a terrifying time, and yet everywhere I am experiencing people’s kindness! From friends to strangers, there is this sense that we are all in this together. We belong to each other. Thank you for sharing Anne’s courageous message! I will share it with my friends. We must keep this book circulating !
I am recovering from ovarian cancer and have been repeatedly learning I cannot work at my old pace, my body is still weak, I am struggling to put on weight, and make my own ends meet, with very little energy. YET so many people are stepping up to help me make it through it, physically, emotionally and financially instantly. My heart is being blown open by all the love that is here. It is my intent to pass it forward and share that it is here! Thank you for your sharing today.