6 July 2006

BERLIN - The mayor of an eastern German town refused to resign Wednesday after a copy of Nazi concentration camp victim Anne Frank's diary was burned in public in a community centre in his town.

Mayor Friedrich Harwig of the village of Pretzien in eastern Saxony-Anhalt state, quit his membership in the Left Party - the successor to former East Germany's communists - but has vowed to stay on in office.

A copy of Anne Frank's diary and a US flag were burned at a summer solstice festival on June 24 in Pretzien.

The festival was sponsored by a far-right group, the "Heimat Bund Ostelbien" (East Elbian Homeland Federation).

Mayor Harwig has come under criticism in the past for allegedly having been a member of the rightist group and for seeking to integrate young rightists into the community.

Anne Frank, a German-Jewish teenager, hid with her family during World War II in an Amsterdam apartment for 25 months. They were betrayed shortly before the end of the war, arrested and sent to concentration camps.

In March of 1945 Anne Frank, aged 15, died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen death camp.

Her diary was first published in 1947 and has since been translated into almost 70 languages making it one of the most widely read books in the world.

DPA

Subject: German news