Restaurant apologizes after criticism over ‘purely disgusting’ meme of Anne Frank

A restaurant in Rhode Island is facing criticism after sharing an anti-Semitic meme featuring an image of Anne Frank, a Jewish diarist who died in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, local news outlets reported.

On July 22, the Atlantic Sports Bar and Grill in Tiverton shared the image on its Facebook page, writing “#ohboy” in the caption, WJAR reported. The post was no longer publicly available as of July 26.

The image was a picture of Frank with text that said “It’s Hotter than an oven out there…And I should know!” ABC 6 reported.

A representative of the Atlantic Sports Bar and Grill could not be reached for comment by McClatchy News.

The words seem to be a reference to the intense heatwave in the northeastern United States at the time, which broke records and shot temperatures into the triple digits in New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, according to The New York Times.

The business’ choice to share the anti-Semitic image was quickly criticized by people, who called it “purely disgusting,” according to the Newport Daily News.

As of July 26, the restaurant’s Facebook page appeared to be disabled. But before disabling the page, the restaurant apologized, the Newport Daily News reported.

“The team here at The Atlantic wants to issue it’s (sic) sincerest apologies for a deeply insensitive post shared by our account on 7/22. The post was poorly thought out and we realize that it was incredibly inappropriate and does not reflect our values as members of our community,” the business said on July 25, according to the outlet. “There is no excuse for the sharing of this post, and there is nothing we can do to rectify it, all we can do now is offer our deepest apology to those who were rightfully hurt by our actions.”.

According to ABC 6, a worker at the restaurant said the employee who posted the meme was not aware of the context and deleted the post when they realized it was a picture of Frank.

Frank was a teenager during the Holocaust, when she and her family were imprisoned in concentration camps run by Nazis. She and her mother both died from typhus in a women’s concentration camp in 1945, according to the Anne Frank House’s website.

After her death, friends of the family convinced Frank’s father, Otto, to publish her diary, which detailed what her life was like as her family hid from the Nazis, the organization said.

The work was published in 1947 and made her one of the most well-known victims of the Holocaust, which claimed millions of lives, according to the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center.

Tiverton is about 25 miles south of Providence.

This story was originally published July 26, 2022 at 6:07 PM with the headline "Restaurant apologizes after criticism over ‘purely disgusting’ meme of Anne Frank."