Dutch Jews Attack Frank Researcher 

By Kathryn Masterson
Associated Press Writer
Friday, September 18, 1998; 3:12 p.m. EDT

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- Dutch Jewish leaders have denounced a demand 
for money from a researcher holding five newly surfaced pages of Anne 
Frank's diary, saying it exploits the teen-ager's legacy. 

``To darken her diary with his kind of dispute over money makes people 
sick,'' Ronni Naftaniel, director of the Center for Information and 
Documentation on Israel, said Friday. 

Cor Suijk, who ignited furor last month when he revealed that he has five 
missing pages to ``The Diary of Anne Frank,'' repeated his demand at a 
meeting with members of the Dutch Jewish community on Thursday. 

As the international director of the New York-based Anne Frank Center, 
Suijk stunned scholars last month by demanding money for the handwritten 
pages in which Anne criticizes her parents' marriage and describes her 
strained relationship with her mother.

``I feel that I have a mission. People are entitled to criticize me, but 
I feel I am morally right,'' Suijk said. 

Suijk says Anne's father, Otto, gave them to him shortly before his death 
in 1980. 

Suijk said he intends to give the pages to the Netherlands State Institute 
for War Documentation, the custodian of Anne's diary, as soon as a 
financial sponsor comes forward. The proceeds would help support his 
cash-strapped foundation. 

He has not received an offer but there has been interest, he said. He 
declined to say who had inquired or disclose the price. A friend of his 
told AT5 television the price is $500,000. 

Author Hans Knoop described the Jewish diarist as ``public domain'' and 
said no one should profit from her legacy. 

``For millions of people, rightly or wrongly, Anne is the symbol of the 
Holocaust,'' he said. ``You should not abuse the pages ... or market them.'' 

Also entangled in the debate is the Anne Frank Fund, which holds the 
copyright to Anne's diary. 

Suijk has repeatedly criticized the Swiss-based group for holding on to 
profits from the diary instead of using them for Holocaust education. 

The fund denies that, saying it gives millions of dollars annually to 
U.S. Holocaust awareness efforts. 

Anne and her family fled Nazi Germany before the war and hid in an Amsterdam 
canal house from July 1942 until they were betrayed in the fall of 1944. 
The teen-ager documented their life in a diary, which was published 
posthumously. 

She died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen camp just weeks before it was 
liberated in the spring of 1945. 

Copyright 1998 The Associated Press