In mid-November, a dozen or so masked individuals waved Nazi flags and shouted vulgar insults outside a veterans’ production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” at American Legion Devereaux Post 141 in the Detroit metropolitan area, presented by the Fowlerville Community Theater.
They spent about 30 minutes chanting outside the theater, shouting things such as “Anne Frank was a whore.” Local officers asked the group to leave, prompting the belligerent group to move across the street.
It left a rather sour note in the community—one that Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) tried to help salve on Dec. 13 when she met with members of the theater company, American Legion staff, business leaders, elected officials, law enforcement and community members as part of her last roundtable in her current political position.
Slotkin beat Republican challenger Mike Rogers, a former GOP House member representing Michigan, in a tight race in November to become the state’s senator-elect.
Slotkin, who is Jewish and a longtime supporter of Israel, posted on X that the protesters were a “small group of mostly outsiders,” hatefully denigrating “one of the most celebrated stories from the Holocaust.”
She wrote, “While that act of hate was shocking and unacceptable, the response from this community was swift. The counter-demonstration and the collective stand against such behavior made it clear: Hate has no home here.”
She added that those fighting such intolerance refuse to let those who berate their efforts define the situation. To that end, they discussed plans on how to counter such incidents in the future.
“This final community roundtable was an opportunity to reflect on how much more we can do when we work together and proved there are dedicated people here standing against hate,” she posted on X.
As for the theater, it posted on Facebook that it aims to educate—wanting “to make people feel and think”—hoping that “by presenting Anne’s story, we can help prevent the atrocities of the past from happening again.”