Who betrayed Anne Frank? Investigation uncovers new suspect

Message from a Holocaust survivor to young people 5:36

(Reuters) --

 A six-year investigation into an unsolved Anne Frank betrayal case has identified a surprise suspect in the mystery of how the Nazis found the famous diary's hiding place in 1944.

The Nazis discovered Anne Frank (Anne in German) and seven other Jews on August 4 of that year, after they hid for nearly two years in a secret annex above a canal-side warehouse in Amsterdam.

They were all deported and Ana died in the Bergen Belsen camp at the age of 15.

• Anne Frank's family tried in vain to flee to the US, new research says

A team that included retired FBI agent Vincent Pankoke and nearly 20 historians, criminologists and data specialists identified a relatively unknown figure as the prime suspect in revealing the cache: Jewish notary Arnold van den Bergh.

However, some other experts stressed that the evidence against him was inconclusive.

| August 1 was Anne Frank's final diary entry, more than 70 years ago. Three days later, she was arrested with her family in the "secret annex" of a house in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where they had been hiding for two years. He later died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp when he was 15 years old. In her diary, Anne describes a picture of herself from 1942: "This is a picture I'd like to look at all the time. To go to Hollywood." Look at the gallery to see other pages of his diary

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For her 13th birthday, Anne Frank received a red checkered diary, her first diary.

He kept it in his hiding place and began writing in it in 1942. After his death, his father, Otto Frank, edited and compiled the diary.

It was published in the Netherlands in 1947 as "The Secret Annex. Diary letters from June 14, 1942 to August 1, 1944"

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Pages with text and photos from Anne Frank's diary, October 1942.

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A handwritten page from Anne Frank's diary includes photos of herself on the beach while on vacation with her sister, Margot.

The two sisters would live hidden in the annex with their mother, Edith;

father, Otto;

and another family.

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Two pages, written in 1942, from the diary.

"Her inner life and her voice seem almost startlingly contemporary, uncannily similar to the voices of adolescents we know," says Francine Prose, author of "Anne Frank: The Book, Life, Life After Death."

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When her diary was almost full, Ana continued writing, using various notebooks.

In 1944, she decided to rewrite her diary entries in the form of a novel, with the intention of publishing it after the war, according to curators at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.

Shown here are the different versions of your diary, now known as versions A, B, and C.

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"The Diary of Anne Frank" has been translated into more than 70 languages ​​in more than 60 nations.

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Anne Frank in 1941. Her diary is often many young people's introduction to the horrors of the Holocaust.

The crucial piece to identify the new suspect in the Anne Frank case

Pieter van Twisk, a member of the investigation team, said the crucial piece of new evidence was an unsigned note to Anne's father, Otto, found in an old post-war investigation file.

The document specifically names Van den Bergh and claims that he passed on the information.

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The note indicates that Van den Bergh had access to addresses where Jews were hiding as a member of the Jewish Council of Amsterdam during the war and had passed lists of those addresses to the Nazis in order to save his own family.

Twisk explained that only four of the initial 32 names remained after the investigation, with Van den Bergh the prime suspect.

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Investigators confirmed that Otto, the only family member to survive the war, was aware of the note but chose not to discuss it publicly.

Van Twisk speculated that Frank's reasons for keeping quiet about the allegation were probably that he couldn't be sure it was true.

Also that he would not have wanted information made public that could further fuel anti-Semitism, and that he also did not want Van den Bergh's three daughters to be blamed for something their father might have done.

Otto "had been to Auschwitz," Van Twisk said.

"He knew that people in difficult situations sometimes do things that cannot be morally justified," he said.

Questions to the investigation

While other members of the Jewish Council were deported in 1943, Van den Bergh was able to remain in the Netherlands.

He died in 1950.

Historian Erik Somers of the Dutch NIOD institute for war, holocaust and genocide studies praised the extensive research.

But, he was skeptical about her conclusion.

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Along these lines, he questioned the centrality of the anonymous note in the arguments in favor of Van den Bergh's responsibility.

And he said the team made assumptions about Amsterdam's wartime Jewish institutions that are not supported by other historical research.

According to Somers, there are many possible reasons why Van den Bergh was never deported because "he was a very influential man."

Ana Frank's diary

Miep Gies, one of the family helpers, kept Anne's diary safe until Otto returned and published it for the first time in 1947. Since then, it has been translated into 60 languages ​​and has captured the imagination of millions of readers worldwide. everyone.

The Anne Frank House Foundation was not involved in the cold case investigation, but shared information from its files to help.

Director Ronald Leopold said the investigation had "generated important new information and a fascinating hypothesis that merits further investigation".

Through modern investigative techniques, a master database was compiled with lists of Dutch collaborators, informants, historical documents, police records, and previous investigations to uncover new leads.

Dozens of scenarios and suspect locations were visualized on a map to identify a traitor, based on knowledge of hiding place, motive and opportunity.

The findings of the new research will be published in the book

by Canadian author Rosemary Sullivan, due out Tuesday.

The director of the Dutch Jewish organization CIDI, which combats anti-Semitism, told Reuters she hoped the book would provide insight into the wartime circumstances of Amsterdam's Jewish population.

"If this becomes 'the Jews did it,' it would be unfortunate. The Nazis were ultimately responsible," CIDI's Hanna Luden stressed.

Anna Frank