Investigators Believe They Know Who Betrayed Anne Frank And Her Family.
Life
Anne Frank died when she was just 15 years old. The diary she kept detailed her life in a secret annex during World War II. This book has touched the hearts of millions since it was published posthumously. The teenager wrote about the anguish of hiding and her hope for humanity. The diary gave readers a glimpse into what life was like for Jews hiding and the steps taken not to get caught.
Anne Frank and her family lived in Amsterdam within a small space concealed by a mock bookcase. They hid for two years until they were discovered by the nazis. The question that has remained unanswered for over 70 years is: who betrayed the Franks and revealed their hiding spot?
Dutch filmmaker and documentarian Thijs Bayens seeks to understand what would compel someone to point out the whereabouts of Jews hiding, knowing full well the deadly consequences. He describes the area where Anne Frank lived as normal, where the butcher, doctor, and policeman all knew each other. These same people, neighbours and community members betrayed each other. “How could that happen?” Bayens asks.
Bayens assembled a team and treated the investigation as a cold case. Led by retired FBI agent Vincent Pankoke, the team included criminologists, an investigative psychologist, historians, criminologists, a war crimes investigator, and archival researchers.
Combing through a database containing thousands of documents, the team took six years to conclude they had found their culprit. They deduced Arnold van den Bergh, a prominent Jewish notary, is the person who most likely sealed Anne’s fate. The team believes van den Bergh gave up the whereabouts of the Franks and four other Jews to the nazis to save his family from being deported and sent to concentration camps.
The bookcase leads to the secret annex.
The team used artificial intelligence to sort through a massive collection of documents. Journalist and co-founder of the project, Peiter Van Twisk, says the “advantage of artificial intelligence is that it can point out connections.” The list of suspects was narrowed down to four, including van den Bergh. At the time, nazis forced Jews to form the Jewish Council to help organize Jewish deportations with, van den Bergh being a founding member. As a notary, he was also involved in the forced sale of works of art to nazis.
The investigation uncovered van den Bergh was able to have himself categorized as ‘non-Jew.’ However, he was reclassified as a Jew after a business dispute. Additionally, van den Bergh’s family deportation exemption was revoked, forcing them into hiding and van den Bergh’s bank account being frozen. Investigators found this was around the time of the raid of the secret annex.
Pankoke found no records of van den Bergh’s family dying in any of the concentration camps.
Arnold van den Bergh died in London in 1950.
Throughout the years, theories have swirled around who could have led the nazis to the Franks’ hiding spot. One theory proposes the family was found by accident when officers were actually looking to steal from inside the warehouse. However, the raid was too organized and appeared to be well-planned. Wilhelm van Maareen was a suspect for many years. However, the warehouseman did not own a phone to make the call nor have access to senior officers.
Anne Frank
Otto Frank, Anne’s father and only survivor, spent years looking for the person who gave up their whereabouts. However, after several years, he gave up on his search. There had been two police investigations launched in Holland, one in 1948 and another in 1963, yielding almost no results. In the latter investigation, a mention was made of an interview with Otto Frank. Shortly after the liberation, he revealed he received an anonymous note pointing to the person who had given out the addresses of where Jews were hiding. That note had one name on it, Arnold van den Bergh.
Otto Frank has a solemn moment as he stands in the attic of the Secret Annex hours before the official opening of the Anne Frank House. May 3, 1960.
The note struck a chord with Otto, so much so that he typed a copy for his records. Pankoke and his team were able to locate the son of one of the original investigators on this case. As luck would have it, the child of one of the lead investigators had some of his father’s material, including a copy of Otto’s note. Forensic techniques authenticated the message.
Holland’s national archive records reveal someone in the Jewish Council did turn over the addresses of Jews hiding.
60 Minutes
The incriminating note.
The next question that stumped the team was why Otto did not publicly reveal the identity of his family’s betrayer? Pankoke believes Otto did not want to add to the sentiment of antisemitism still widely prevalent after WWII.
The research and its findings will be published in a book by Canadian author Rosemary Sullivan, "The Betrayal of Anne Frank," released on Jan 18, 2022. Executive director of the Anne Frank House, Ronald Leopold, cautions against this investigation providing a definitive answer. "I think they come up with a lot of interesting information, but I also think there are still many missing pieces of the puzzle. And those pieces need to be further investigated in order to see how we can value this new theory,” Leopold points out. The Anne Frank House was not involved in the investigation, although it allowed the investigators access to their archives.
As for judging van den Bergh, it’s not a black and white scenario. “When it came to the decision," Sullivan points out, "do you give a list of anonymous names to the nazis, or do you watch yourself or your wife and possibly your children being deported to extermination camps? I don't see how we can judge a man for that unless we were in his shoes."
“Personally, I think he is a tragic figure,” Sullivan adds.
The team grappled with making their findings public for fear of stoking further antisemitism and bigotry. Bayens told 60 Minutes he found the discovery painful but also hopes the revelation that a Jew betrayed a Jew makes people uncomfortable, “ because it shows you how bizarre the nazi regime really operated, and how they brought people to do these terrible things. The real question is, what would I have done?”
Anne Frank, her sister Margot, mother Edith, and her father Otto along with four family friends were discovered and arrested on August 4, 1944. It was the 761st day in the Secret Annex. The police arrived between 10:30 am and 11:00 am at Prinsengracht 263. The building still stands today along the canal in Amsterdam. It is now the Anne Frank House foundation welcoming millions of visitors every year since it opened to the public on May 3, 1960.
After their arrest, everyone was sent to Auschwitz. Edith Frank died of starvation. Anne and Margot were relocated to Bergen-Belsen where in early 1945, an outbreak of typhus broke through the camp killing approximately 17,000 prisoners. Historians believe Anne died from the epidemic.
The Diary of Anne Frank has been translated into 60 languages and sold over 30 million copies.
“Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.” Anne Frank