A Great Idea if Your Company Deported Jews During the Holocaust Is to Name a Train After Anne Frank

Today’s entry to the canon of Absolutely No-Fail Ideas: a German train named after Anne Frank, who was executed by the Nazis along with her family after being crammed onto a cattle train to Auschwitz.

The news that train company Deutsche Bahn is planning to name a high-speed train after Frank, along with 25 other “famous Germans,” according to the BBC, has been met with outcry from the groups charged with preserving Frank’s legacy.

A statement from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam said that naming a train after Frank is “painful for people who experienced these deportations and causes fresh pain for those who still bear the consequences of those times within them.” Mirja Wenzel, the director of the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt, tweeted that the idea is “based on historical amnesia.”

But a spokesperson for the state-owned train company defended the announcement, saying Frank also represented “peaceful co-existence of different cultures, which is more important than ever in times such as this.”

It’s a particularly dubious move for Deutshe Bahn, which the BBC notes is the successor of Deutsche Reichsbahn, a company that deported millions of Jews and others killed during the Holocaust.

The trains, which are also slated to be named after figures like Karl Marx, Ludwig van Beethoven, Marlene Dietrich, and others, are set to begin service in the next two years.