Maybe an Anne Frank Halloween Costume Isn't the Best Idea

Every year Halloween stores release a shockingly tasteless costume to the public that ends up getting pulled before the big day even arrives. This year that costume is an Anne Frank costume that was sold on HalloweenCostumes.com before they pulled it after wave after wave of customer outrage. While it would be one thing for a young girl to take inspiration from Anne Frank's story, it's entirely different for a company to try to capitalize on a Holocaust victim for cash -especially when they seem to think the appropriate pose for the costume model is a sassy little troublemaker.

Of course, the costume wasn't just limited to HalloweenCostumes.com -it was also for sale on other Halloween websites as well (though it does get pulled pretty quickly from most sites as soon as angry Twitter users have found it). Most of the other sites are labeling the costume as "World War II Evacuee Girl" instead of saying outright that it is Anne Frank. Either way, the result is a pretty tasteless way to cash in on a tragic historical figure.

Via The Daily Dot

I think someone got the history wrong. (It could be me.) That looks like a WWII Evacuee Girl ... from England, to avoid German bombing. An example from children's literature is the Pevensie children, in 'The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe'. Here's a picture from http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/world_war2/evacuation/ which is similar to the costume: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/schools/primaryhistory/images/world_war2/evacuation/ww2_children_evac_kentish_town.jpg . But the Daily Dot article says: "“World War II Evacuee Girl” outfit instead, which is heinous in its own right for trivializing Jewish evacuations from Germany during the war." I don't know of any distinctive dress like this for Jews fleeing German persecution and murder. For one, Jews needed authorization to leave, and permission from the countries they were fleeing to, which was difficult to get. (Remember the tragedy of the Jews on the MS St. Louis?). And the tag contains name and contact details, which was needed in England because the children were evacuated without the parents, while in Germany Jewish parents left with their children.

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I've read about the World War II Evacuee Girl costume in years past. The reasons it survives is because schools in Britain use it for re-enactments of the children's evacuation when they study World War II. Costume manufacturers/advertisers made a huge mistake in labeling it as Anne Frank.

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The costume originated from smiffys - a UK firm. It's no longer available there, but based on their other offerings it would appear it was originally presented as a WW2 Evacuee Girl Costume and someone at one their distributing subsidiaries took an artistic marketing solution to the problem of selling it outside of the UK were no one knows the history of evacuee children while everyone knows Anne Frank. From one seller's site: This costume makes a historical enhancement to your child's history project on World War II, or school book report on the Narnia books or the iconic Diary of Anne Frank. Stockings and shoes not included.

Agree it was a very bad move. In the realm of stupid, but I don't think there was any intentional malice.
The Telegraph-UK article

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