Entertainment

Arrest made in Anne Frank book vandalism in Tokyo

Police on Friday arrested a man for allegedly tearing pages out of books related to Anne Frank at a Tokyo library.
Ripped and damaged copies of Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl and related books were discovered across Tokyo libraries, sparking fears of an anti-Semitic motive. (Koji Ueda/Associated Press)

Police on Friday arrested a man for allegedly tearing pages out of books related to Anne Frank at a Tokyo library.

More than 300 books related to the Holocaust victim, including The Diary of a Young Girl, have been found vandalized recently at libraries across Japan's capital.

Tokyo police said the man, 36, sneaked into a library on Feb. 5 and ripped pages from 23 Frank-related books, including at least one copy of the diary. Some of the ripped pages were found in a plastic bag at an unidentified house in Tokyo.

Police said that the suspect admitted to ripping the pages out of the books, but that his motive was unclear. They did not release the suspect's name.

Frank wrote her diary during the two years her family hid from the Nazis during the Second World War.

She was 15 when she died in a concentration camp in 1945. Her father survived and published the diary, which has become the most widely read document to emerge from the Holocaust.

Israeli Embassy to Japan representative Peleg Lewi donated Anne Frank-related books to Suginami Ward Mayor Ryo Tanaka in Tokyo in February. (Shizuo Kambayashi/Associated Press)