A book of fairytales that was once owned by Anne Frank has been sold at auction in New York for $62,500 by the Swann Auction Galleries on East 25th Street. The book is a German language copy of the 1925 edition of “Grimm’s Fairy Tales,” including Snow White and Hansel and Gretel. Anne Frank wrote her name and her sister Margot’s on the first page.

According to a spokesman for the auction house, the auction included half a dozen potential buyers and lasted a minute.

Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl,” which she wrote in an attic in Amsterdam from June 1942 to August 1944, hiding from the Nazis, has sold more than 30 million copies and translated into 67 languages. She dies in Bergen-Belsen in 1945. The Grim Brothers book was left behind in the Frank apartment when the family moved to their hiding place. It was bought by the Museum of World War II near Boston.

Kenneth Rendell, the museum’s founder, told the New York Times he plans to make the book would a centerpiece of the museum’s Holocaust collection, which includes other personal possessions belonging to members of the Frank family, alongside what he calls “very human pieces” from other concentration camp victims. These include the concentration camp pajamas worn by Josef Wolski, a prisoner in Auschwitz, Mauthausen and Buchenwald, and a chess set, made from rye bread by a prisoner at Auschwitz for an SS guard. The King piece on the brown German side was crafted to resemble Hitler.

El Al Plane Breaks Wing at Foggy Amsterdam Airport

An El Al flight from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv on Friday was unexpectedly canceled when the Boeing 737 hit a fence as it was being towed to a runway at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.

None of the 150 passengers and crew were physically hurt in the accident, but the plane’s wing was broken in the accident, which officials said was due to poor visibility from heavy fog.

Schipol Airport is one of the largest airports in Europe.

The driver of the towing vehicle was a local airport employee, and was not related to El Al.

El Al officials said all passengers were sent to local hotels and were to be boarded on a flight late Saturday night so as to accommodate the numerous Sabbath-observant travelers.

An El Al flight departing Amsterdam en route to Tel Aviv did not leave as scheduled Thursday morning when officials suddenly spotted a suspicious vehicle on the tarmac.

The vehicle, with Belgian license plates, was seen in the area of the runway for take-off.

Several other flights that were scheduled for departure at the same time were also delayed as well, as Dutch officials scoured the airport.

Special ops police hunted through the area with ground forces and from the skies in a helicopter for at least an hour before calling off the search.

The airport was declared safe and all operations were returned to normal.

(JNi.media) Readers working on their annual list of biggest Chutzpa stories of 2015 will likely include the following invite: On November 8, for 15 hours, Amsterdam will commemorate Kristallnacht, Night of Broken Glass of November 9, 1938, with an event at the monument of Jewish resistance behind the Amsterdam town hall, organized by the Nederlands Palestina Komitee, with keynote speaker Hanin Zoabi.

With her credentials of open support for the Hamas terror government in Gaza and her fierce promotion of violence against Jews in Judea and Samaria, it is hard to imagine a less appropriate choice for commemorating the brutal burning down of synagogues and Jewish businesses by the Nazi thugs, unless the purpose of the event were to teach the Dutch masses how to go about burning synagogues and Jewish businesses. And yet, the NPK invitation is there for all to see, appointing the participant in the May 2010 Mavi Marmara Flotilla, meant to delegitimize Israel’s right to self defense, to speak on behalf of Jewish victims.

One of the three female speakers at the event, MK Zoabi—who compared Israel to Nazi Germany more than once—will use her speech to decry Israeli discrimination against Palestinians, according to the announcement, for the following reason: it turns out the annual Kristallnacht commemoration Platform in previous years has always paid attention to the rising racism in the world—Germany, Austria, Greece—however, it never touched Israel, possibly because the organizers in previous years hesitated to attack Jews on the day commemorating attacks on Jews. That’s over, apparently, and “given recent events,” the invite says, “it is now inevitable that we discuss racism in Israel,” seeing as the Centraal Joods Overleg (Central Jewish Board) in the Netherlands is running its own commemoration, “this taboo is broken this year.”

It is noteworthy that the Nederlands Palestina Komitee mentions that Zoabi is a democratically elected member of the Israeli parliament in the same sentence that announces she would be attacking Israel’s policy of discrimination against Arabs. Like we said, do consider this story for your best Chutzpas of 2015 list.

(JNi.media) The Jewish community of Amsterdam says it is worried about the proposed refugee shelter in Amstelveen-Noord, a suburban town in the Amsterdam metropolitan area, NL Times reported. Local residents were informed on Monday night about the new shelter, which will house 400 refugees, mostly from Syria and Iraq. The proposed location is an office building less than half a mile away from Buitenveldert, a neighborhood of Amsterdam which is considered the city’s modern Jewish quarter, with a Synagogue, Jewish schools, nursing homes, shops and kosher restaurants. Buitenveldert is also the largest Jewish community in the Netherlands.

The Dutch Central Jewish Board is concerned that there will be unpleasant, if not dangerous incidents because of the close proximity of the new shelter to Jewish homes. “Let there be no doubt that the Jewish community is overwhelmingly for the reception of war refugees, but we have major concerns”, chairman Ron van der Wieken said on Monday. “These people come from countries such as Syria and Iraq, who traditionally take an extremely harsh tone against Jews. These people are largely brainwashed to hate Jews. You should not underestimate it.”

Attorney Ron Eisenmann, who serves as President of the Center for Information and Documentation Israel tweeted: “Not a good plan, Syrian refugees in the middle of a Jewish neighborhood.” His tweet received an angry reaction from Laura Bromet, an alderwoman in Waterland, who tweeted back: “Maybe you can point out a Syrian neighborhood where they can go.”

The south Amsterdam faction of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, aka VVD Amsterdam Zuid, where Eisenmann is a faction leader, released a statement saying they are concerned about the support—or lack thereof from the residents of Buitenveldert. “Given the disquiet among residents in the area and the importance of social safety, the VVD insists that adequate security and surveillance will be present in the district.”

VVD also insists that the new shelter would only accommodate families, NL Times reported.

Dutch leftists have succeeded in blocking a planned twining agreement between Tel Aviv and Amsterdam and even rejected a compromise that would have included Ramallah in the agreement.

The refusal of the pro-Arab groups to accept compromise is the perfect example of the Palestinian Authority-leftist hate of cooperating on anything with Israel.

Amsterdam Mayor Eberhard van der Laan was impressed with Tel Aviv, which has becomes Israel’s showcase city for homosexuality, but the left-wing withdrew the plan after left-wing GroenLinks Green party and the Socialists refused to back the twinning because of the “occupation.”

GroenLinks leader Rutger Groot Wassink said:

 As long as Israel occupies Palestine, structurally infringes human rights and continues its settlement policy. [no agreement is feasible].

Amsterdam, where Islam now vies with Christianity as the most widely practiced religion, is known for legalized prostitution and a “Live and let live” society is becoming a bit hypocritical in the face of the rapidly rising Muslim population.

The mayor has taken a stand in favor of multi-culture but criticized other parties during an election campaign for distributing campaign leaflets in minority languages.

He believes in assimilation, but a Muslim plurality in Amsterdam is not far away, and it remains to be seen if its leaders’ policy won’t be “live and let live so long as you live like us.”

Amsterdam has lost Tel Aviv as a twin-sister city. Tel Aviv also feels the loss, but there are enough “Tzadiklim” in the city that it has been spared official ties with Amsterdam.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA) — A Dutch Jewish organization rediscovered two ancient ritual baths that had been forgotten after the Holocaust.

In reporting about the find Friday, the Crescas Jewish education institute wrote on its website that large parts of the 19th-century ritual baths, or mikvahs, were unearthed last week at a Jewish community building in the northern city of Groningen.

“The mikvahs are an exciting find,” Crescas wrote. “They are remarkably well-preserved. The marble of one of the baths was partially damaged during renovations.”

The mikvahs, which are seven-feet deep, have seven marble stairs, according to Crescas.

The Jewish community of Groningen, which was nearly wiped out during the Holocaust, sold the building in 1952 to the municipality, which renovated the building and rededicated it as a seat of the Jewish community in 1981. The mikvahs were covered up and exposed only recently, after members of the local Jewish community chanced upon blueprints of the building, the RTV Noord television station reported.

“The find is so important because Jewish life stopped here in 1943: the Jews were gone. A few buildings that were essential to the Jewish community remained: the synagogue, the old people’s home, the Jewish school, but the mikvah, which is also essential, was gone. No one knew where it was,” Marcel Wichgers, director of Groningen’s Folkingestraat Synagogue Association, or SFS, told RTV.

SFS was unaware until recently that the two mikvahs lay under the floor of a room it used for storage, Crescas wrote.

The Reformatorisch Dagblad daily described the find as one of the most important archeological discoveries made in Groningen in recent years. The structure is now opened to spectators twice a week, on Wednesdays and Sundays.

In 1930, the Jewish population in Groningen was 2,408, according to the Amsterdam’s Jewish Historical Museum. In 1951, there were 225 Jews, and currently only a few dozen Jews live in the northern city.