Pages were torn and covers were damaged of more than 200 Anne Frank books in public libraries across Tokyo.

According to reports, most of the books destroyed were versions of "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl" that covered the Holocaust. Librarians have counted at least 265 damaged books at 31 municipal libraries since the end of January.

The books tell the tale of a Jewish girl hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II. The author and her family spent 25 months hiding in cramped quarters in Amsterdam, living in fear of discovery by the Nazis. They were betrayed, arrested and deported in August 1944. Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp just weeks before it was liberated in 1945, according to CNN.

The vandalizing reports have fuelled concern beyond Japan.

"The geographic scope of these incidents strongly suggest an organized effort to denigrate the memory of the most famous of the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis in the World War II Holocaust," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish Human Rights organization in a press statement. "I know from my many visits to Japan, how much Anne Frank is studied and revered by millions of Japanese. Only people imbued with bigotry and hatred would seek to destroy Anne's historic words of courage, hope and love in the face of impending doom."

On Friday, the top government spokesman, Yoshihide Suga, expressed disappointment at the damage, saying that the police would investigate. He called the incidents "shameful" and "regrettable."

The book was published after Frank's death in a concentration camp at age 15. It has been widely read in Japan, as in many other countries, and is one of the best-known testimonies about the Holocaust, according to The Province.