Anne Frank's Stepsister: She 'Probably Would Have Been' a Belieber
Yet another person with close ties to Anne Frank has come forward to defend Justin Bieber from critics deriding the questionable comments he left in the guestbook at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam last week.
"Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber," the 19-year-old pop singer inscribed in the museum's guestbook.
The remarks drew the ire of many online who felt they were self-serving and in poor taste.
But now, Anne Frank's stepsister Eva Schloss has spoken out in support of Bieber, saying Anne "probably would have been a fan," were she alive — and presumably still fifteen — today.
"Why not? He's a young man and she was a young girl, and she liked film stars and music," Schloss, an Auschwitz survivor herself, told The Sun.
A close childhood friend of Anne, Schloss became a member of the Frank family when her mother married Frank's father after the war.
"We used to play together, skipping and sitting on the steps together by our apartments," Schloss recalled. "Anne was very lively but I was more shy. I was good in sports but she was more intellectually developed, quite interested in clothes and boys."
Schloss, who lives in London, adds her voice to that of the Anne Frank House's spokeswoman Maatje Mostart, who praised Bieber for bothering to come to the museum at all.
"He could be doing other things in Amsterdam, he was very interested," Mostart told the AFP earlier this week.
