Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center has a horrifying article in the Chicago Sun-Times about the raging antisemitism in Europe, with tendrils now reaching even into the Anne Frank House: Widespread anti-Semitism going unchallenged in Europe. (Hat tip: sharona.)

One would think that Amsterdam’s Anne Frank House, the shrine to the Holocaust’s most famous victim, would work to draw a historic and moral red line between the Shoah and the current Middle East conflict. Sadly, it turns out that the museum, established in the place where Anne and her family were hidden and ultimately betrayed to the Nazis, may have become the unwitting dupe of the insidious ”Jews = Nazis” (or it is just Israelis?) chorus. Not far from where Anne wrote her remarkable diary, museum visitors now are confronted with a photo exhibit juxtaposing pictures of the Fuhrer and the Israeli prime minister as well as a video clip of protesters waving posters of Hitler and Sharon.

The exhibit is part of the ”Out of Line” Exhibition, which the museum’s Web site describes as ”an interactive exhibition that deals with contemporary issues” — particularly, the clash of ”two fundamental rights: freedom of expression and the right to be protected against discrimination.”

How exactly are museum visitors supposed to balance these two competing ”rights” in specific regard to the exhibit marrying the pictures Hitler and Sharon? Is the clash between free speech right of extremists to express their anti-Israel, anti-Jewish bile and the right of Holland’s Jewish minority to be protected against ”hate speech” the pedagogical issue at hand? Maybe so, but the Anne Frank House provides no such guidance. In fact, its Web site, while showcasing contemporary controversies over neo-Nazis and rapper Eminem, discreetly fails even to mention that the ”Hitler-Sharon” comparison is part of the ”Out of Line” Exhibition.

As any visitor to the Wiesenthal’s Museum of Tolerance knows, we are not afraid to take on bigots, past and present, head-on, and to challenge visitors to examine their own beliefs — indeed, confront their own prejudices. However, to educate you must provide guidelines and context, which is precisely what the Anne Frank House fails to do in the case of its ”Hitler-Sharon” exhibit.

Just as Anne Frank’s family learned that there was no permanent sanctuary from the closing grip of Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, the Anne Frank House has to recognize that it also cannot escape from confronting the rising tide of anti-Semitism, often posing as ”anti-Zionism,” in contemporary Europe including Holland. It isn’t enough just to invoke, mechanically, pieties about balancing free speech and minority rights.

What the Anne Frank House needs to do is to challenge the beliefs — and the prejudices — of today’s Dutch at a time when pro-Palestinian demonstrators regularly jolt Amsterdam with violent demonstrations, not just reviling Sharon and Israel, but chanting: ”Hamas, Hamas, all Jews to the gas.”