A new team of investigators claims that a Jewish notary betrayed Anne Frank’s hiding place to safeguard his family from deportation after two prior searches in 1947 and 1963.
A symbolic tombstone at the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lohheide, Germany, where Anne Frank and her sister perished of typhus in 1945.
When the Nazis invaded Holland, Anne Frank was 10 years old. The clever young Jewish girl spent two years in hiding before they discovered the hidden Amsterdam attic in 1944. Since her diaries, The Diary of a Young Girl, was published in 1947, researchers have sought to determine who gave away Anne Frank.
Pankoke’s team found evidence suggesting that van den Bergh was the man who most likely betrayed Anne Frank. It included psychologists, historians, archivists, war crimes experts, and criminologists, as well as pointing to a Jewish notary named Arnold van den Bergh.
To reach their conclusion, the researchers combed through numerous primary sources and investigated approximately 30 suspects in 20 different scenarios. Van den Bergh was a Jewish member of the Council who is said to have known the area’s secret locations — and he sold them to the Nazis in order to protect his family.
“There’s no indication that he knew who was hiding at any of these locations,” Pankoke added. “When van den Bergh lost his series of immunities exempting him from having to go to the camps, he had to offer something valuable to the Nazis in order for him and his wife to stay safe.
What Happened to Anne Frank?
On June 12, 1929, Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany. She lived for only a few years before world hatred against “inferiors” like Jews reached an incendiary level. Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany in 1933. The Frank family relocated to Amsterdam the year after to start a business.
The family would hide the fruit extract pectin that Otto Frank sold at Opekta Works in Prinsengracht 263 in fear for their lives. The youngsters went to school with pleasure for a few short years before the Nazis invaded Belgium and Holland. In 1938, Otto Frank established Pectacon, a wholesaler of herbs.
The local persecution of Jews began in May 1940, when Germany invaded the Netherlands. For her next birthday, Anne was forced to attend an exclusively Jewish school, and for her following birthday, she received an autograph book she chose to use as a diary. Her family moved into their hideout on July 6, 1942.
The Anne Frank House Museum claims that the annex, which was hidden behind a false wall in the Opekta Works warehouse and included three stories, was home to eight people: Otto, Edith, Anne, Margot, Hermann van Pels (a Pectacon adviser), and four family members — Peter van Pels (Otto
Anne Frank was 15 years old when SS troops stormed the hideout and arrested all eight persons, according to The New York Times. In February 1945, both Margot and Anne died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, leaving the mystery of their alleged collaborator unanswered.
Was a Jewish Notary the Man Who Betrayed Anne Frank?
The only survivor of the 1944 raid was Otto Frank, who possessed the copyright to his daughter’s diary and had it published. An official inquiry into who gave away Anne Frank began in the same year, as well as the second one in 1963. However, neither managed to identify her Traitor with 100% certainty.
The bookcase covered the hidden annex where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis.
The 1963 inquest was dedicated to an unaddressed communication that Otto Frank received in June 1945, which identified van den Bergh as a traitor. Pankoke’s crew utilized Dutch government archives records to confirm his suspicion by documenting the list of Jewish Council members who may have provided Nazis addresses.
“That list was offered as a means of keeping him and his family out of the extermination camps,” says Rosemary Sullivan, author of The Betrayal of Anne Frank, a new book about the investigation.
“But it mattered to me, and I think it matters to the group, that the list was anonymous. He was not betraying Otto Frank by giving his address on an unsanctioned list of houses without names.”
The Anne Frank House Museum has stated that while the number of persons who might have betrayed Anne Frank is too long to list, there were many. The most recent study looked at the 2016 hypothesis that the Nazis stumbled upon the attic by accident and investigated every person with the means and desire to betray the Franks.
Opekta Works staff member Willem van Maaren was investigated, but he was ruled out. They also disregarded Nelly Voskuijl, a Nazi sympathizer and sister of one of the secret attic builders for lack of evidence. Similarly, Jewish collaborator Ans van Dijk, who betrayed 145 people and has long been a leading
The Anne Frank House Museum is located in Amsterdam’s Prinsengracht 263, the address where Anne Frank hid.
“We’ve looked at more than 30 people in 20 different situations and determined that one scenario is the most likely,” said inquiry member Thijs Bayens. “We don’t have absolute certainty because betrayal is circumstantial.”
The most probable scenario, according to the evidence, appeared to be that van den Bergh was responsible. Jewish councils were established by the Nazis in order to govern Jewish communities across Nazi-occupied Europe. The members of the councils were exempted from being deported until 1943, when the Nazis disbanded them.
But he was allowed to remain in Amsterdam, despite the fact that van den Bergh was wanted for a crime. And now, according to the investigation team, he used lists of residences where Jews were thought to be hiding as leverage to stay free.
Why Is It Still a Mystery Who Informed on the Family’s Hiding Place?
Some experts are unconvinced that the investigation team has identified Anne Frank’s traitor, despite their certainty that they have.
According to the book’s author, David Barnouw, he had considered van den Bergh as a suspect but dismissed him. He explained that the 1945 note Otto Frank got in which his name was listed as the informant was insufficient evidence to convict him.
In an interview with the newspaper De Telegraaf, Emile Schrijver, director of the Jewish Cultural Quarter in Amsterdam, concurred.
“The evidence is simply too thin to accuse anyone,” he explained in an interview with The New York Times. “They made this huge accusation based on a slew of assumptions but is really just based on a little bit of information.”
Anne Frank died just months before the war’s conclusion.
One of the most fascinating at that time, though not so much anymore when Jan Wichert’s Underground State is now available in English and has a wealth of information about life in hiding: “Why would persons in hiding give their addresses to the Jewish Council?” Laurien Vastenhout, a researcher at the NI
Finally, because of the distance between the crime and Anne’s hiding place, the question of who betrayed her may never be fully solved. However, in a most tragic sense, the answer has always been there.
The Nazis murdered Anne Frank and more than 100,000 Dutch Jews during the Holocaust. And if van den Bergh really did reveal the family’s location, Maureen Sullivan urges caution.
“Who among us, if our families were on the line and heading to extermination camps, wouldn’t do what we could? And if what we could do would be to offer anonymous addresses, I don’t know that I know many people who could resist it,” she said.
“We went looking for a perpetrator and we found a victim.”
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