'Anne Frank' children's costume sparks controversy

A group showed up, two dressed as the twin towers, one dressed as an airplane.

They spent the night bumping into each other.

Thanks for the Halloween costume idea

Is this a part of the new denial of history trend, where we pretend nothing bad ever happened by destroying all evidence of it?

I think you might be hitting on something here. I'm not sure how big a trend this is, or whether it's a big deal (I kind of think it is). There is something here, although it's hard to put my finger on it. I do think there's a bit of washing away of history in this case, in order to protect feelings, in some instances. I really only have an anecdote to share on this to share.

On the online series Tabletop, Wil Wheaton plays board games with his friends and occasionally interesting people (like Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games). In one episode they played Alhambra; one of the players was a black lady (which I only mention since it may be relevant here). One of the mechanics was a resources you had, called slaves, which you could sacrifice to get stuff done quicker/cheaper, or something like that, I forget. Well after the game was explained, Wil basically said, "'Slaves' might be offensive to some, so we're just gonna call them 'helpers' instead."

The comments on Youtube (I know, I know) basically tore the staff and Wil a new one. And I say, rightfully so. I'm sure there are other instances like this too that I'm not remembering. It's the strangest thing to me; I find it disrespectful to those that actually had to go through that. Like...that's what happened! The coasts of Italy/southern Europe were raided by the Moors/Berbers/Egyptians/Abbasid Caliphate, people were ripped away and forced into slavery. I don't understand at all the desire to refuse to acknowledge it happened. It's a recorded part of history. And many of these same people are all too happy to remind everyone white that they're responsible for American slavery prior to 1865 (even you, IB, doesn't matter you're Canadian). But for some reason we just let this one slide because...I dunno. They're Muslim slavers? They're colored slavers (those existed in US history too)? It was more than 150 years ago, so they get a pass?

I feel it's related to something Jordan Peterson talks about, about understanding your dark side. To condense an important and complex subject down briefly, it basically comes down to this - Remember Timur the Lame, who killed 5% of the world's population? Or Genghis Khan, who killed millions upon millions of people, or Stalin/Mao who did the same to their own people? Or even boil it down to a more humble figure - just a run of the mill camp guard at Auschwitz. Remember that human beings did all those things, and all of us happen to be human beings.

There's a seriously dark, murderous, even genocidal path our species is capable of going down, and it's important to remember that we can get there, no problem. You can fall into that kind of place, everyone one of us - our own special kind of hell. And the best defense against it, is to find that darkness within you, understand what you're really capable of if you get serious about hurting other people, and face that part of yourself down so that when it bubbles up from time to time, you're not horrified by it. And you can beat it back, and you know you can, because you faced it before. So you can conduct yourself in a way to make sure you don't go down the path of a Timur, or Hitler, or Mao, or one of these mass shooters.

And I think that's one of the big issues about this kind of "side-stepping" of facts of history to make them more comfortable for people. You forget just how fucking murderous and evil we can actually be. It's actually incredible just how much mayhem and death we can actually cause when we put our minds to it. And I think everyone needs to discover that dark side within themselves so that they can keep away from that path and stay on a good, or at least decent path. We see this in fiction all the time.

When Luke goes into the cave in The Empire Strikes Back, what happens? He fights a vision of Vader, decapitates him, looks into the mask, and he sees himself. And Yoda tells him "It is the future you see". The unspoken message there is "this is what you're going to become if you don't shape up". When Harry Potter talks to Dumbledore after he stops Quirrel in The Sorcerer's (Philosopher's) Stone (I think), he tells him that a small piece of Voldemort was inside him when Voldemort tried to kill him. That's why he can speak with snakes, and that's why the Sorting Hat said he would be good in Slytherin House - the hat detected that piece of Voldemort in him, and he was basically the archetype of the house. Luke has to learn the ways of the Jedi to stop himself from falling to the dark side, and Harry has to find a way to kill off that part of Voldemort inside him before he can be truly defeated.

Whew. I rambled a bit there, I think. I think it's mostly coherent. The ultimate point is - this side-stepping of historical fact is both illogical and potentially harmful, if you refuse to see the depths to which our species can plunge.

I also wanted to say something about Halloween and costumes in general, but I'll stop here for now.