Anne Frank House Says Visit By Justin Bieber Was ‘Positive’

Representatives of the Anne Frank House on Monday praised Justin Bieber for his visit to the museum after a weekend in which a message he left on a guestbook there set off a maelstrom of criticism.

A short note posted Monday on the Facebook page of the Anne Frank House said: “The Anne Frank House was pleased to welcome Justin Bieber to the Anne Frank House last Friday. We think it is very positive that he took the time and effort to visit our museum. He was very interested in the story of Anne Frank and stayed for over an hour. We hope that his visit will inspire his fans to learn more about her life and hopefully read the diary.”

On Saturday the house, which is in Amsterdam, said in a Facebook post that Mr. Bieber visited there on Friday before he performed a concert in Arnhem. He wrote in a guestbook: “Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber.” (That is, one of Mr. Bieber’s fans.)

That brief message drew many angry comments from people who said Mr. Bieber did not respect the sanctity of the house and was using Anne Frank to reflect on his own celebrity. ” Glad he went,” one commenter wrote on the Facebook post, “but, the last sentence is VERY self serving. he missed the lessons of Anne totally.”

Mr. Bieber has not yet commented on the visit but Annemarie Bekker, a spokeswoman for the Anne Frank House, told Reuters that she and her colleagues were “a bit overwhelmed” by the response that his comments drew.

“He’s a 19-year-old boy taking the effort to come and see the museum,” Ms. Bekker said, “and we’d like to point that out, and I think it’s quite innocent what he put down.”