thenerdguy
Newbie
- Joined
- May 20, 2003
- Messages
- 2,457
- Reaction score
- 0
Man this did make me mad!
Anne Frank died at the hands of the brutal Nazis and left behind a world-famous diary in which she wrote of love and peace.
Today, she would be devastated to know that her book is being corrupted by another brutal regime, North Korea, to incite its youth to hatred and war with America.
Correspondent Mike Wallace's report on the teaching of ?The Diary of Anne Frank? in North Korea's schools will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Feb. 29, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
It's shocking to Dutch television reporter Miriam Bartelsman, who went to Pyongyang, North Korea, and interviewed students there studying the book.
"Anne Frank's diary is a big plea...for freedom and for peace, but I think in North Korea, the diary is being used to promote war," she tells Wallace.
In the North Korean junior high schools' teaching of the book, the Nazis, who killed Frank and made war on the world, have a modern mirror image -- the United States -- and Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler has a successor -- George W. Bush.
"As long as the warmonger Bush and the Nazi Americans live, who are worse than Hitler's fascists, world peace will be impossible to achieve," a North Korean schoolgirl says to Bartelsman.
"The Americans enjoy war...it's part of their nature," says a boy.
The concentration camps where Frank died have American descendants, too. "As long as there are American Nazis, there will be secret places where innocent people are murdered. Places like that exist in America," says another.
The children are also being taught that war with America is inevitable and that they don't want to end up like Frank because she was weak.
"She didn't win. She was not a hero," Bartelsman says the students believe. "They are learning, the children, 'We all want to be a hero and we don't want to be killed.'"
Americans or "imperialists" will kill them, they believe, but not if they can be stronger than Frank was. "Our students will fight with a pen in one hand and a weapon in the other until the last American is dead," says a female student.
The children, sons and daughters of the country's elite, didn't seem to know that upwards of a million of their fellow citizens are in slave labor camps or that much of the populace living outside their city is undernourished.
After several days in North Korea, Bartelsman came to this conclusion: "I think all of those people are kind of prisoners in their own country.?
If they are prisoners, their warden is dictator Kim Jong-Il, in whose honor and at whose request the students read the book. "Our beloved general sent Anne Frank's book to every student," a girl says.
"According to our respected leader, Kim Jong-Il, "The Diary of Anne Frank" is one of the great classics of the world,? says another student. ?That is why we read the diary, out of great respect for our leader Kim Jong-Il."
The whole business is an outrage to Buddy Elias, Frank's cousin and her last remaining direct relative. He gave permission to North Korea to publish the book.
"We were not told that [the book] will be misused in schools. We had no idea," says Elias. "If Anne Frank knew what North Korea was doing with her diary, she would weep."
The country, he says, reminds him of Nazi Germany. "I lived through the Hitler time and [North Korea] is just exactly the same," says Elias.
"There were so many slogans [in Nazi Germany: 'One leader.' 'Our leader. Heil Hitler'...[It's the] same thing [in North Korea].?
Link
Anne Frank died at the hands of the brutal Nazis and left behind a world-famous diary in which she wrote of love and peace.
Today, she would be devastated to know that her book is being corrupted by another brutal regime, North Korea, to incite its youth to hatred and war with America.
Correspondent Mike Wallace's report on the teaching of ?The Diary of Anne Frank? in North Korea's schools will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Feb. 29, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
It's shocking to Dutch television reporter Miriam Bartelsman, who went to Pyongyang, North Korea, and interviewed students there studying the book.
"Anne Frank's diary is a big plea...for freedom and for peace, but I think in North Korea, the diary is being used to promote war," she tells Wallace.
In the North Korean junior high schools' teaching of the book, the Nazis, who killed Frank and made war on the world, have a modern mirror image -- the United States -- and Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler has a successor -- George W. Bush.
"As long as the warmonger Bush and the Nazi Americans live, who are worse than Hitler's fascists, world peace will be impossible to achieve," a North Korean schoolgirl says to Bartelsman.
"The Americans enjoy war...it's part of their nature," says a boy.
The concentration camps where Frank died have American descendants, too. "As long as there are American Nazis, there will be secret places where innocent people are murdered. Places like that exist in America," says another.
The children are also being taught that war with America is inevitable and that they don't want to end up like Frank because she was weak.
"She didn't win. She was not a hero," Bartelsman says the students believe. "They are learning, the children, 'We all want to be a hero and we don't want to be killed.'"
Americans or "imperialists" will kill them, they believe, but not if they can be stronger than Frank was. "Our students will fight with a pen in one hand and a weapon in the other until the last American is dead," says a female student.
The children, sons and daughters of the country's elite, didn't seem to know that upwards of a million of their fellow citizens are in slave labor camps or that much of the populace living outside their city is undernourished.
After several days in North Korea, Bartelsman came to this conclusion: "I think all of those people are kind of prisoners in their own country.?
If they are prisoners, their warden is dictator Kim Jong-Il, in whose honor and at whose request the students read the book. "Our beloved general sent Anne Frank's book to every student," a girl says.
"According to our respected leader, Kim Jong-Il, "The Diary of Anne Frank" is one of the great classics of the world,? says another student. ?That is why we read the diary, out of great respect for our leader Kim Jong-Il."
The whole business is an outrage to Buddy Elias, Frank's cousin and her last remaining direct relative. He gave permission to North Korea to publish the book.
"We were not told that [the book] will be misused in schools. We had no idea," says Elias. "If Anne Frank knew what North Korea was doing with her diary, she would weep."
The country, he says, reminds him of Nazi Germany. "I lived through the Hitler time and [North Korea] is just exactly the same," says Elias.
"There were so many slogans [in Nazi Germany: 'One leader.' 'Our leader. Heil Hitler'...[It's the] same thing [in North Korea].?
Link
