Los Angeles play recasts Anne Frank story, compares Nazis to ICE agents searching for immigrants

A new version of the theatrical play “The Diary of Anne Frank” takes the original premise of the Jewish Frank family hiding from Nazis and re-casts it as a story about Latino immigrants hiding from ICE officials, according to reports.

What is it about?

A promotional piece for the production states it was inspired by “the true story of a Jewish woman in Los Angeles who created a ‘Safe House’ for a Latina mother and her two daughters after her husband was deported by ICE.”

"Director Stan Zimmerman has cast his production of the classic play The Diary of Anne Frank, by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett and newly adapted by Wendy Kesselman,” according to the website.

Zimmerman is a former writer for the TV show "Roseanne."

The original version of the true story details how a 13-year-old Anne Frank wrote in her diary about her family having to hide in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. After hiding for more than two years, the Gestapo finds the Frank family and sends them to a Holocaust extermination camp. Only Anne’s father Otto survived.

The controversial play comes amid left-wing comparisons of the Holocaust to U.S. government immigration policies.

In March, for example, CNN compared Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to Nazis.

“A Jewish woman heard an undocumented immigrant and her two daughters were on the run from ICE,” CNN stated on Twitter. “Driven by thoughts of the Holocaust, she risked her own comfort to offer them shelter.”

How is the play being criticized?

Brietbart News wrote:

The "Jewish woman" in question has no particular link to the Holocaust. She was born after the war and cites no relatives as survivors. She is simply exploiting the symbolism of the Holocaust for a cause.

The implication is that ICE agents are like Nazis or Gestapo secret police ready to arrest illegal aliens for legitimate reason other than their identity. Jews in Germany and in Nazi-occupied Europe were citizens of the countries where they were arrested, and where they were murdered or deported to death camps. They had not violated immigration laws or any other laws except laws preventing them from existing.

The play runs for three weeks in September at the Dorie Theatre in Los Angeles.