Jeremy Corbyn urges MPs to ‘remember the life’ of Anne Frank at PMQs

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has urged MPs to remember the life of the Jewish diarist Anne Frank who would have turned 90 today.

Corbyn opened PMQs today with a quote from the Diary of Anne Frank, a devastating account of life in hiding under Nazi occupation which stood the test of time.

“Today would have been the 90th birthday of Anne Frank had she survived but died in the Nazi Bergen Belsen concentration camp in 1945,” Corbyn told MPs.

“In her diary she wrote many things but one of them that I think really does apply to all of us at all times is ‘human greatness does not lie in wealth or power but in character and goodness’.

“And I think we should remember her life and all that she’s inspired in so many others ever since the Second World War.”

The remark follows a difficult fortnight for Labour, after the MP Rupa Huq plunged the party into yet another antisemitism row after reports two former employees lodged formal complaints of Jew-hate against her.

One of the ex-staffers, who did not wish to be named, accused Huq of taunting him for wearing a Star of David badge pinned to his satchel.

Meanwhile, Labour’s Peterborough MP Lisa Forbes took up her seat in Parliament on Monday despite calls from Jewish groups for her removal after she appeared to endorse antisemitic material online.

“The irony is not lost on me. You know what I’m taking about. #PMQs,” Karen Pollock Chief Executive of the Holocaust Education Trust wrote, an apparent reference to Jeremy Corbyn.

• OPINION: We will never know the adult Anne Frank would have become