The men went down with whatever they could use as weapons and Hermann van Pels shouted Police. Kugler was a married man, and he never shared the secret of the hidden Jews with his wife, wrote Van Wijk. "The NIWD has never tried to find out who betrayed the Franks but they have contacts which I don't have and know how archives in the Netherlands work. In June 1947 1,500 copies of the Dutch edition of the diary were produced. According to Pankoke, Van Dijk had betrayed the family of Otto Frank's second wife. We had all stopped breathing audibly by then, 8 hearts were pounding, footsteps on our stairs, then a rattling on the bookcase door.' "He was a Dutch Nazi, a well-known traitor and an anti-semite and was very anti-Jewish. Two Dutch investigations, in 1947-48 and 1963-64, targeted the warehouse manager, Willem van Maaren, but were inconclusive. Per BBC, he wasn't deported and had lost his Jewish identity during the war. Photo collection: Anne Frank Stichting, Amsterdam / photographer: Allard Bovenberg, All 8 of us were just pleased that we had slept so well that night and not heard a thing., We had all stopped breathing audibly by then., Reconstruction: the arrest of the people in hiding. Her motive for betrayal, according to Mller, was that she did not want to lose her husband too and he would have been deported for aiding the Franks if they were discovered, which she believed was only a matter of time. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. They also believe their work in solving this decades-old cold case resonates today. But two police investigations - one immediately after the war and another in the 1960s - turned up nothing and Van Maaren died in 1971 professing his innocence. "There's no smoking gun but we are going to make a comparison of the two theories and see what we can rule out and in. When the people in hiding put it back, it was brutally kicked in again. You have reached your limit of free articles. | This should be part of her biography.. Only when he began research for the book in 2010 was the long-time marketing professional able to locate documents that contradict the family backstory on Nelly. Specifically, the author believes Nelly was involved in the betrayal of the so-called Secret Annex Jews, including the iconic teenage diarist. Otto, for his part, never publicly named van den Bergh, who died in 1950, as the informant. Nelly knew that Bep and her father were helping Jews. Magazines, Digital ", Dutch historians investigate new claims to identity of person who revealed hiding place of Jewish family, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Photo collection: Nationaal Archief/ Anefo, access number 2.24.01.04, item number 919-6449. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday. The research is based on Franks diary entries from March 1944entries that researchers say have not been used as a source until now. Your California Privacy Rights | Do Not Sell My Personal Information In the years since Anne Franks diary was published, investigators and historians have proposed several other potential informants. The diary was given to Anne on her 13th birthday, just weeks before she and her family went into hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. The encounter ended with Nelly shouting, Just go to your Jews!. The team looked at dozens of potential suspects before arriving at the person they believe likely gave up the Franks' location: Arnold van den Bergh. The helpers worked in the office above the warehouse. In 2022,The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigationwhich details the findings of Pankoke's investigationcited Arnold van den Bergh, a Jewish businessman and member of the Jewish Council in Holland, as the culprit. In several investigations after the war, Van Maaren was the prime suspect for the betrayal of Anne Frank; however Van Maaren publicly denied he was responsible. The burglars had ripped a panel out of the warehouses street door in order to get in. - Jan 22, 2022 10:54 pm UTC. Out of all the warehouse staff, only Johan Voskuijl was aware of the presence of the people in hiding. Pankoke and his team are compiling a huge database of other documents that may contain information relevant to the Frank case: lists of Nazi informants, lists of Jews who were turned over to the authorities, names of Gestapo agents who lived in Amsterdam, police records and so on. During his research for the book, Van Wijk learned that Nelly did far more than engage in flirtations with German soldiers. For decades, historians have debated who betrayed Anne Frank and her family. There is no smoking gun because betrayal is circumstantial.. Frank and her older sister, Margot, died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp less than a year later, in February 1945. Summer of 1933. . But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! For more than 20 years, employee Van Maaren was the main suspect. The researchers also investigated the theory, first raised by scholars at the Anne Frank House in 2016, that the SS discovered the hiding place by chance while searching the warehouse for evidence of illegal work and ration coupon fraud. After spending two years eluding Nazi capture while in hiding in Amsterdam, the Frank family was discovered on. ", Photo of Ans van Dijk courtesy of Ben van Meerendonk/IISH. Ahlers was among the suspects Pankoke and his team investigated and ultimately ruled out. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Writer Rosemary Sullivan chronicled the painstaking process in a new book, The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation. Incorrect password. The subject is still being researched. For decades, historians have debated who betrayed Anne Frank and her family. 2022 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. During the day we always have to walk quietly and speak softly, the people in the warehouse mustnt hear us, Anne wrote in her diary (11 July 1942). Did Willem van Maaren betray Anne Frank? The house where she and her family hid in a sealed-off room at Prinsengracht 263 in central Amsterdam was turned into a museum in 1960 and receives almost a million visits a year, mainly from the US. A long-held theory proposed that a new employee at her fathers business, Willem van Maaren, tipped off the Nazis. War diary of life in hiding became world bestseller The Diary of Anne Frank, first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl, is one of the most widely read books in the world. Warehouse worker Lammert Hartog did undeclared work, and director Victor Kugler kept part of the company income out of the books. Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation, The Diary of Anne Frank: the critical edition (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1989)., A-version 21 April 1944; B-version, 5 August 1943. Wilhelm van Maaren One of the people who has. "His own mother said he had a bad character from birth and that he was always parading his Nazi connections," the author told the Guardian yesterday. Trending News Erik Somers, a historian at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, praised the depth of the investigation but criticized its conclusion. Pankoke's team wondered: Did the suspected betrayer know the location of the secret annex? It has been translated into around 67 languages and has sold over 31 million copies. Immediately after the war, Willem van Maaren was the only suspect in the investigation into the raid of the Secret Annex by the Sicherheitsdienst. Cookie Settings, Five Places Where You Can Still Find Gold in the United States, Scientists Taught Pet Parrots to Video Call Each Otherand the Birds Loved It, Balto's DNA Provides a New Look at the Intrepid Sled Dog, The Science of California's 'Super Bloom,' Visible From Space, What We're Still Learning About Rosalind Franklins Unheralded Brilliance. Two other plausible suspects emerged over the years: Lena van Bladeren-Hartog (died 1963) and Tonny Ahlers (1917 - 2000). Nevertheless, Lee's book "is interesting because it takes a more balanced view of Otto Frank," Barnouw said. Now, reports Jon Wertheim for CBS News 60 Minutes, a six-year investigation spearheaded by retired FBI agent Vince Pankoke has pinpointed the likely informant: Arnold van den Bergh, a Jewish notary who may have revealed the Franks hiding place to the Nazis to protect his own family from deportation. The Germans were paying a bounty of 40 guilders per head, which was "a large amount in those days," she said. Explanations for the discovery are mainly based on testimonies, because no documents about the raid on the Secret Annex have been preserved. In a 2018 book,The Backyard of the Secret Annex,Gerard Kremer, the son of a member of the Dutch resistance of the same name, argues that a Jewish woman,Ans van Dijk, was responsible for the Franks' capture. At the warehouse on the ground floor, the officers addressed employee Willem van Maaren. The proof is not final. You must not mark someone down in history as the betrayer of Anne Frank if you dont have conclusive evidence for this., the Anne Frank House in 2016 reinvestigated the raid, People in hiding in the occupied Netherlands. / CBS News. A petty thief and unsavory braggart, Van Maaren was investigated shortly after the war, but nothing was proved. Willem van Maaren was the traitor. One day during his youth, Van Wijk heard his mother sobbing in the bathroom. A 2015 biography of Bep Voskuijl (co-authored by her son Joop) suggested that one of Bep's sisters, Nelly, may have snitched on the Franks. Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany, but she and her family fled the country and settled in Amsterdam after Adolf Hitler came to power. In Joop van Wijks psychological diagnosis of his late mother Bep Voskuijl, she spent her post-war life being her own therapist in a kind of conversation with her alter ego. "Van den Bergh wasn't deported," said Pieter van Twisk, a veteran Dutch journalist who co-founded the investigative project and led the research team. God truly protected us ,Anne wrote in her diary, much relieved. According to Pankoke, for Van den Bergh to have that level of protection, he must have had some leverage with the Nazis. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community. He strongly suspected a warehouse employee named Willem van Maaren, who had sparked concerns among the Franks and the people who helped them hide. 2002 The Associated Press. Scholars and the public alike have long debated the identity of the individual (or individuals) who betrayed Frank, her family and the other residents of the so-called Secret Annex. He worked in the same building where the Franks were hiding.. Wertheim spoke with Vince Pankoke, a retired FBI agent. Their mother, Edith, had died of starvation the year before. Anne Frank HouseWestermarkt 201016 DK Amsterdam, Ronald Leopold, Executive Director of the Anne Frank House. Millions of people have read The Diary of Anne Frank since it was first published posthumously in 1947. He had previously asked questions about the Annex and tried in many ways to see if there was anyone who had entered the building after closing hours. The sound might arouse suspicion. He also was distrustful of the Ahlers family, saying they simply may be seeking notoriety. Her writing created a trail to judicial documents from other parts of the Netherlands, resulting in the latest theory. Anne received the famous diary on June 12, 1942, for her 13th birthday, around the time the Gestapo began deporting Jews in Amsterdam. Fifteen-year-old Anne, her sister Margot and her mother Edith died in Nazi concentration camps. Clearly, the museums report concludes, the last word about that fateful summer day in 1944 has not yet been said.. For instance, Melissa Muller's 1998 biography of Anne Frank concluded that a woman named Lena Hartog, wife of the company's assistant warehouse manager, betrayed the family. .component--type-recirculation .item:nth-child(5) { ", Ms Lee is also cautious but believes the secret of who shopped Anne Frank is there to be unearthed. The people in hiding slept through the first one, in July 1943. For more than 20 years, employee Van Maaren was the main suspect. | Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel, 2023 The Times of Israel , All Rights Reserved, Anne Frank, aged 12, at her school desk in Amsterdam, 1941. The helpers did not trust warehouse worker Willem van Maaren. That was a major setback, because Van Maaren was curious, and he noticed that people had been in the building after closing time. (11 April 1944.) Nelly didnt just engage in an adolescent relationship with a soldier it went far beyond that, wrote Van Wijk. Nobody knows for sure who betrayed the Franks, but after doing research, I believe that Tony Ahlers is guilty. The involvement of Van Dijk, who was executed in 1948 after admitting to collaborating in the capture of 145 people, had been previously claimed. The video above was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and Will Croxton. In her diary, Anne Frank wrote about Nelly on several occasions. "They were friends. As The New York Timesreported, they hoped to bring new technology, including forensic accounting, computer modeling and even crowd sourcing research, to examine existing evidence such as Anne Franks diary and the Amsterdam building where the Franks hid. Your Privacy Rights In the middle of war, Nelly moved to Austria with a Nazi officer, only to have the relationship fall apart. (Amsterdam: NIOD, 2003). One of the people who has been most often scrutinized as the potential betrayer is Wilhelm van Maaren, a worker in the warehouse building where the Franks hid. They had come very close to being discovered! See: Barnouw, David & Stroom, Gerrold van der, Who betrayed Anne Frank? Fox on Parkinson's: "Every day it gets tougher" On 17 January 2022 the cold case teampresentedtheir findings. Who betrayed the Frank family and why? Advertising Notice But a few years after the war, reports Hanneloes Pen for Dutch newspaper Het Parool, he told a journalist that his family had been betrayed by a member of the Jewish community. The Anne Frank House undertook its own investigation and arrived at a surprising new theory in 2017, thanks to the efforts of a historian named Gertjan Brock. Van Dijk was executed after the war for collaborating with the Nazis and betraying dozens of fellow Jews. Although he heard about Nellys romantic liaisons with Germans while growing up, Van Wijk was never told about his aunts role as a Nazi collaborator. Wootson Jr. of the Post reports that the teams work will be chronicled in a podcast and, possibly, a documentary. The German-born Frank, who moved to Holland in 1933, ran a spice-trading company that sold goods to the Wehrmacht, the German army. All Rights Reserved. Lee said Ahlers probably decided to tip off the authorities after his own company slid into bankruptcy and he no longer needed to do business with Frank's company. Only the father, Otto Frank, survived. The case against Ahlers fell apart, Pankoke told Wertheim, when it came to knowledge.
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