Justin Beiber Thinks Anne Frank Would Have Been a ‘Beileber’

Justin Beiber sparked an un-'beilebable' (sorry; had to) controversy after visiting the home of Anne Frank in Amsterdam over the weekend. He toured the museum for an hour in advance of his show in Arnhem in the Netherlands Saturday night; the comments he left in the museum's guest book have angered thousands.

"Truly inspiring to be able to come here, " he wrote,  "Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a Belieber."

It seems innocent enough, and I am sure the Beebs didn't intend for his comments to have a malicious or callous subtext. To him, Anne Frank is just like any other young girl, and he hoped that she would have enjoyed his music as so many other girls do.

People are angry, though--and I am one of them. Why?

Anne Frank was a girl: a young girl, full of hopes and dreams who wrote about crushes in her journal and giggled with friends at school. She was, for a brief time, like any other girl-- but Anne Frank was not a typical teenager. She never had that chance.

In the end, her home, her friends, her family--everything she loved was stripped away from her. She labored for several brutal months in a concentration camp and died of typhus, cold and alone in Bergen-Belsen.

She was one of approximately 15 to 20 million others who died, all victims of the greatest atrocity ever committed by mankind.

My brain cannot even comprehend a number so large.

I think people are angry because Justin Beiber's guest book message trivializes that unimaginable horror and loss. Condensing Anne Frank into the stereotypical boy-crazed teen doesn't do her justice, and God knows she is owed that and much, much more.

Thousands of fans swarmed the Anne Frank House Saturday. I wonder how many of those girls understood--fully understood--where they were. As they stood outside, did they think of Anne, of her family, of the millions and millions of lives snuffed out by hatred? Did they feel the weight of those lives, that loss?

Or were they just there for an autograph?

That's what breaks my heart, what makes me angry: that we live in a world were something as profound as The Holocaust could be forgotten, tossed aside in the name of celebrity.