Newspaper deletes article comparing the lockdown experience to Anne Frank hiding from the Nazis

• The Globe and Mail published opinion piece, 'Lessons in living from Anne Frank,' by Debra Dolan on Wednesday.
• The newspaper deleted the article following widespread backlash although it remains archived online.
• The Globe and Mail also tweeted an apology the following day.

A Canadian newspaper has deleted an article comparing lockdown to Anne Frank's years hiding from the Nazis during World War II.

The Globe and Mail published the opinion piece, 'I'm channeling Anne Frank's spirit in lockdown,' by Debra Dolan on Wednesday. Later the headline was changed to 'Lessons in living from Anne Frank.'

In it, Dolan wrote: "As my COVID fatigue has gotten the better of me in recent weeks I started to say to myself, 'What would Anne do?' or 'How would Anne describe this time?' and 'How would she cope?'"

She did acknowledge that Frank "was contained with seven others in space less than 400 square feet for 761 days."

The article caused widespread backlash across Twitter.

The Globe and Mail has since deleted the article, although it remains archived online. It also tweeted an apology the following day, which read: "An essay about Anne Frank and lockdown has been removed because it did not meet our standards. We apologize for this error."

Frank went into hiding with her family in 1942, during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The Jewish schoolgirl spent two years in an attic in Amsterdam, chronicling her experience in a diary before they were captured during a Gestapo raid.

She died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany in 1945, aged 15. 'The Diary Of a Young Girl' by Anne Frank was published posthumously, selling over 30 million copies.