In 2002, author Carol Ann Lee argued the informant was Tonny Ahlers, a Dutch Nazi sympathizer who had previously been a business associate of Otto Frank. In her diary, Anne reported various attempted burglaries and actual burglaries. Immediately after the war, Willem van Maaren was the only suspect in the investigation into the raid of the Secret Annex by the Sicherheitsdienst. 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. Previously, Voskuijl and others had placed suspicion on a disgruntled male warehouse employee, Willem van Maaren. Historians have proposed competing hypotheses without definitive proof . Preview: Michael J. They had come very close to being discovered! If Frank had known that Van Dijk had also betrayed his family, Pankoke reasoned, he would have had no incentive to keep the information quiet. The four supplied the families with food and other necessities, knowing full well that they could be condemned to death by the Nazis for aiding Jews. As the whole world now knows, 15-year-old Anne Frank died (likely of typhoid fever) a day after her older sister, Margot, at the Bergen-Belsen death camp between February and April 1945. It's been such a long time, and most of the people who knew are dead.". Pankoke and his colleagues, including an investigative psychologist, a war crimes investigator, historians, criminologists and archivists, approached the historical mystery like a criminal cold case. "He was a Dutch Nazi, a well-known traitor and an anti-semite and was very anti-Jewish. Ahlers had so much information on Otto Frank. Unlike other news outlets, we havent put up a paywall. Then, the team considered the motive. According to Pankoke, Van Dijk had betrayed the family of Otto Frank's second wife. Anne received the famous diary on June 12, 1942, for her 13th birthday, around the time the Gestapo began deporting Jews in Amsterdam. Stockroom manager Willem van Maaren was another suspect, and since several possible culprits knew each other, there is also the possibility that more than one person betrayed the Frank. And, during a 1994 lecture, Secret Annex helper Miep Gies let slip that the informant died prior to 1960. This is highly significant and even if they don't find who the traitor was, the scope to find out exactly what did happen is enormous.". Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. He places books and bits of paper on the very edges of things in the warehouse so that if anyone walks by they fall off, Anne wrote in her diary in April of 1944. Out of the seven others who hid with her, her father, Otto Frank, was the only one who survived the Holocaust. Van Maaren pointed up the stairs, but the police already seemed to know exactly where to go. Historians made no further headway. First, fingers were pointed at Willem van Maaren, who worked in a warehouse below where the Jews were hidden by coworkers of Otto Frank, Anne's father. On Aug. 4, 1944, they went to investigate 263 Prinsengrachtthe same building where Anne and her family were hidingafter receiving tips of fraudulent food-ration cards and illegal employment happening there. Cookie Policy As fast as they could, they all fled back to the hiding place. Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter, Despite decades of research, betrayal as a point of departure has delivered nothing conclusive, Ronald Leopold, Executive Director of the Anne Frank House museum, said in statement. Ahlers said he believed his father received money from Frank, because the flow of funds stopped when Frank died in 1980. It has been widely believed that Willem van Maaren, a warehouse employee who worked for Otto Frank, outed the Frank family. There was another important reason Pankoke crossed Van Dijk off the list of suspects. SD big shot Willy Lages knew that the callerwas a well-known informant. Many experts believe that someone alerted Nazi authorities to the hiding place of Frank and her family, but the culprit has never been determined. Her father, Otto Frank, survived, and spent the rest of his life trying to discover who had betrayed his family. The initial police investigation occurred in 1947, when Otto and the Helpers' repeated complaints to the political police accusing Van Maaren finally prompted an investigation. Michael J. [Otto Frank] might have done this out of loyalty for my mother, wrote Van Wijk. However, Pankoke told 60 Minutes he trusts the evidence shows those hiding in the annex were betrayed and that the Nazi discovery and arrest wasn't merely a coincidence. 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 But Barnouw said Lee's case sounded credible enough for the institute to reopen its investigation into the betrayal. On July 6, the Frank family began their lives in the Secret Annex attached to the office building at Prinsengracht263,where Otto Frank had worked. The business continued to operate while the Franks were in hiding, although it apparently was no longer trading with the Germans. But the most innovative aspect of the investigation is its use of big data analysisa technology that has only emerged within the past decadeto comb through reams of documents relevant to the case. The helpers did not trust warehouse worker Willem van Maaren. Clearly, the museums report concludes, the last word about that fateful summer day in 1944 has not yet been said.. This deterioration took place around the period in which a call was made to Gestapo headquarters by a young woman it was later claimed to inform on the Frank familys hiding place. 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. In the authors opinion, his mother had an internal conflict that led her to opt for as little attention as possible, practically complete radio silence, from the beginning of the Sixties, he wrote. When they returned to the Annex, they found the pages of Anne's diary strewn across the floor, and the duo decided to preserve it for posterity. We dont have 100 percent certainty. After tracking down Hulsman for the book, Van Wijk learned of a heated conversation between Nelly and other members of the Voskuijl family during the hiding period. But soon, it proved she was unable to resolve things that way.. Did Willem van Maaren betray Anne Frank? "After the play and the book, Otto Frank was kind of like a saint. Jewish Councils were set up in Nazi-controlled cities and pitted members of the Jewish community against one another. Please enter valid email address to continue. Millions of people have read The Diary of Anne Frank since it was first published posthumously in 1947. Their biggest fear was that the police would come back again, but fortunately, that didn't happen. After the war, Otto Frank, the only member of his family who survived the Holocaust, made statements indicating he knew who his betrayer was. Nelly knew that Bep and her father were helping Jews. The case. Thats why we started the Times of Israel eleven years ago - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world. For decades, historians have debated who betrayed Anne Frank and her family. In Anne's diary it becomes clear that the Annex occupants also did not trust him. Per the New York Times Alexandra Jacobs, the team drew on a combination of big data and artificial intelligence analysis, old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting, interviews, and archival research to narrow down the pool of suspects. "He may have got money for it. WIRED Media Group It has been proven beyond doubt, says Ms Lee, that Ahlers knew where the Franks were hiding and even his own family believe that he is the traitor. First published in English in 1952 as "The Diary of a Young Girl" and later as a stage play and film, her story made her a symbol both of the Holocaust and of Dutch bravery. In 1963, the National Police Internal Investigation Department investigated the raid. At the time of Bep Voskuijls death in 1983, she was the least known of the four Dutch resisters who helped hide Anne Frank. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. In a 2002 biography of Anne Frank's father, Otto, author Carol Ann Lee suggested the betrayer might be Tonny Ahlers, a Dutch National Socialist. For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members. But despite suspicions, there was no conclusive evidence van Maaren betrayed the family. The involvement of Van Dijk, who was executed in 1948 after admitting to collaborating in the capture of 145 people, had been previously claimed. Still, experts remain focused on the fate of the teenage diarist whose life was cut tragically short. The encounter ended with Nelly shouting, Just go to your Jews!. A petty thief and unsavory braggart, Van Maaren was investigated shortly after the war, but nothing was proved. "I looked at his files in The Hague because after the war he was convicted of betraying people and he was jailed," Lee said in an interview for a Dutch television documentary. Who betrayed Anne Frank? It takes just a few seconds. However, because Anne wrote about Nellys collaboration with the Nazis in the original version of her her diary, the authors proved that Nelly returned to Amsterdam in 1943. A long-held theory proposed that a new employee at her father's business, Willem van Maaren, tipped off the Nazis. For decades suspicion centred on a man called Willem Van Maaren, who worked in the warehouse attached to the Franks' hiding place. Did they do it for money? In Van Wijks assessment, there is no doubt Nelly knew about the Jews in hiding. Already a member? Since 2017, Van Wijk has been interviewed several times by members of an international forensics team looking into the cold case of the betrayal, he told The Times of Israel. 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. Meilan Solly It was clear that Tonny Ahlers had no knowledge that Otto Frank and the others were hiding in the annex.". Only the father, Otto Frank, survived. It's possible, Brock suggested, that there was no betrayal, and the SS raid was really part of ongoing attempts to track down purveyors of illegal goods. Anne died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen in the spring of 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated. Hours earlier, Karl Josef Silberbauer, the Austrian commander of the squad, received a phone call from the head of the Amsterdam security police who said eight Jews were hiding in the warehouse. In the middle of war, Nelly moved to Austria with a Nazi officer, only to have the relationship fall apart. Speaking with Marsha Lederman of the Globe and Mail, Sullivan says the researchers characterize the notary as a tragic figure, not as some kind of villain. Bayens tells the AP that [w]e went looking for a perpetrator and we found a victim., Van den Bergh gave that list as a way of keeping him and his family out of the extermination camps, Sullivan says. "Otto Frank was of no more use to him in that sense, so he betrayed them," Lee said in the television interview. Did Willem van Maaren betray the Franks? The Subdistrict Court dismissed the . Frank and her older sister, Margot, died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp less than a year later, in February 1945. Fox on Parkinson's, and maintaining optimism, Bruce Springsteen on "Nebraska," and the emergence of Springsteen the poet, Michael J. That, Ms Lee suggests, is more likely to have been a man called Maarten Kuiper, who made a living from the betrayal of Jews and who moved into Ahlers' flat with him the day before the raid. Not only was she carousing with German soldiers, but Nellys rowdy behavior earned her a stint in police custody. He vehemently denied any involvement and said that Victor Kugler had known about the pieces of wood and other things. If Frank had known that Van Dijk had also betrayed his family, Pankoke reasoned, he would have had no incentive to keep the information quiet. A Dutch newspaper, Het Parool, printed a story about Anne's diary which aroused the interest of a publishing house. "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. Instead, he was drawn into solving a famous cold case: the question of who betrayed Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis, leading to the Franks' arrest and deportation to a concentration camp. The first police investigation: Was WILLEM VAN MAAREN the betrayer? And who among us, if our families were on the line and heading to extermination camps, wouldnt do what we could? Stockroom manager Willem van Maaren was another suspect, and since several possible culprits knew each other, there is also the possibility that more than one person betrayed the Frank family. Otto, for his part, never publicly named van den Bergh, who died in 1950, as the informant. All Rights Reserved. The book by Carol Ann Lee, a British author living in Amsterdam, says the likely informant was a former business associate of Otto Frank, Anne's father. Regardless of whether van den Bergh was the person who informed on the Franks, the ones ultimately responsible for their deathsand those of the more than 100,000 Dutch Jews murdered during the Holocaustwere the Nazis. All Rights Reserved. Van Dijk was executed after the war for collaborating with the Nazis and betraying dozens of fellow Jews. As a member of the local Jewish Counciladministrative bodies established by the Nazis to govern Jewish communities in German-occupied Europevan den Bergh had access to lists of addresses where Jews were known to be in hiding. Sign in to stop seeing this, Netanyahu calls for national unity at Independence Day ceremony, Five wounded in terror car-ramming near busy Jerusalem market, Godfather meets Shtisel: New Netflix thriller delves into Haredi diamond dealers, 15,000 attend controversial joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day event. In 1963, the SS officer. Anne and her family hid for 25 months in a canal-side warehouse in central Amsterdam, where the teen-ager wrote her thoughts, yearnings and descriptions of life in the cramped annex into notebooks. The proof is not final. According to Gerald Kremer's The Backyard of the Secret Annex, the Guardian reports, the Franks were betrayed by Anna "Ans" van Dijk, a Jewish woman executed in 1948 for her collaboration in. 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. He referred them to the first floor, where the office staff was. The people in hiding slept through the first one, in July 1943. In addition to Johan Voskuijls involvement, another of the Voskuijl sisters sewed clothes for the Jews in hiding, making the effort a family affair. This theory continues on an assumption that in itself is insufficiently proven, that is that betrayal by telephone led to the raid. "And maybe to the Holocaust survivors that are still out there, they understand that somebody still cares that these mysteries are solved. Last year, the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam floated a new theory: Nazi officers who were investigating illegal work and ration fraud at the warehouse accidentally stumbled upon the Jews hiding in the annex. They will also scrutinise the letters of Anne's father, Otto, for clues and examine police transcripts of interviews dating back to the 1940s. "We can never be just Dutch, or just English, or whatever, we will always be Jews as well. For example, it is certain that two representatives from whom the helpers bought illegal coupons were arrested for black marketeering. Prior to that, Frank always said he did not want to know who betrayed his family. Wertheim spoke with Vince Pankoke, a retired FBI agent. The burglars managed to take two cash boxes containing forty guilders, blank giro and bank cheques, and coupons for 150 kilograms of sugar. Investigators began taking a fresh look at the case in 2016, hoping to provide new answers. Voskuijls father, Johan, was also in on the secret of the Jews in hiding. In this book, he's much more flesh and blood. The Amsterdam home where she and her family hid is today a museum known as the Anne Frank House. In his 2018 book The Backyard of the Secret Annex author Gerard Kremer claimed that Ans van Dijk betrayed those hiding in the annex. After spending two years eluding Nazi capture while in hiding in Amsterdam, the Frank family was discovered on Aug. 4, 1944, and promptly deported from the Netherlands to concentration camps. There was more going on in that building than just the hiding of Jews. Kugler was a married man, and he never shared the secret of the hidden Jews with his wife, wrote Van Wijk. The video above was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and Will Croxton. The burglars had ripped a panel out of the warehouses street door in order to get in. But Dutch government historians disclosed yesterday that two new theories about who betrayed 15-year-old Jewish schoolgirl Anne Frank to the Nazis in occupied Amsterdam are so compelling that they are reopening their investigations. Join the Ars Orbital Transmission mailing list to get weekly updates delivered to your inbox. Nobody knows for sure who betrayed the Franks, but after doing research, I believe that Tony Ahlers is guilty. When did the Van Pels (Van . The second thing was there was nothing that actually tied her to information that would have led her to know that people were in the annex.". Terms of Use On August 4, 1944, police in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam raided a warehouse and arrested eight Jews who were hiding in an annex disguised behind a bookcase. Fox on Parkinson's: "Every day it gets tougher" Nevertheless, researchers do not rule out the potential that Frank and the others were the victims of a betrayal. The first theory, forwarded by British author and Anne Frank expert Carol Anne Lee, in her book The Hidden Life of Otto Frank, seems to have aroused the most interest. } Anne often wrote about good-natured Bep in her diary, including happenings in the large Voskuijl family of eight siblings. Pankoke also showed Wertheim a note, which investigators say Otto Frank received after the war, that specifically names Van den Bergh as the betrayer. Suspicion for being the betrayer 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. Multiple people have been suspected of informing the Nazis of the Franks' hiding place, while one theory suggests it may have simply been bad luck. Among those captured was Anne Frank, a 15-year-old schoolgirl who had spent over two years living in the cramped safehouse with her parents and older sister. He and his team spent five years poring over every bit of pertinent material, setting up an extensive online database, and developing an AI program to help them sift through it all and find new connections. Your Privacy Rights The second theory, put forward by Austrian writer Melissa Mller, has a cleaning lady in the warehouse, Lena Hartog, as the traitor. The case was reopened in 1963 after Austrian Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal located Silberbauer in the Vienna police force. Anne was especially sorry about the latter, because it would be difficult to replace that many coupons. Hermann van Pels hit the ground with an axe, which finally drove them away. Writer Rosemary Sullivan chronicled the painstaking process in a new book, The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation. A 20-person team for theAnne Frank House was led, in part, by two retired FBI officials; former special agent Vince Pankoke, and behavioral scientist Roger Depue. Ahlers had discovered, says Lee, that Otto's herb and food preservative business had supplied the Wehrmacht throughout the war and that, she suggests, would have been enough to see Otto branded a collaborator. As for opportunity, the team examined whether the suspect was in Amsterdam at the time of the August 1944 raid or might have any opportunity to betray the hiding place. Michael J. 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. Only one of the people in hiding, Franks father, Otto, survived World War II. More than 100,000 Dutch Jews - 70 percent of the community - were deported to concentration camps in Germany. Those hiding in the annex were wary of Van Maaren, and Anne Frank documented their suspicion in her diary. 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. The authors suspicions were deepened during interviews he conducted for the biography. The Anne Frank House has opened its archives to Pankoke and his team, and, according to Boffey of the Guardian, welcomes the new research initiative. January 16, 2022 / 8:09 PM In her diary, Anne Frank wrote about Nelly on several occasions. "Number one, that during the time period of the betrayal, she wasn't in town," Pankoke explained. In 1947, Otto Frank and the helpers filed a complaint against him with the political police on suspicion of betrayal. display: none; For more than 20 years, employee Van Maaren was the main suspect. (public domain), Author Joop van Wijk with the biography of his mother, Bep Voskuijl (courtesy), Bep Voskuijl, lower right, with Otto Frank (middle) and the other Dutch helpers in October, 1945 (public domain), Nelly Voskuijl during World War II (courtesy: Joop van Wijk), View of the secret annex with its blacked out windows at the renovated Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Nov. 21, 2018 (AP Photo/Peter Dejong), The Secret Annex in which Anne Frank wrote her diary, Amsterdam, January 2017 (Matt Lebovic/The Times of Israel), Otto Frank and Bep Voskuijl in 1978 (courtesy: Joop van Wijk), Anne Franks hiding place bedroom during the 1950s (left) and her restored bedroom at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam today (Matt Lebovic/The Times of Israel), Exterior of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, November 2014 (Matt Lebovic/The Times of Israel). The second major burglary in the night of 9 to 10 April 1944 was much more serious. Recently translated into English, Van Wijks family account adds what he calls a remarkable name to the list of people suspected of betraying the Secret Annex nearly 75 years ago: his mothers sister. Terrified, the people in hiding kept very quiet. Left unsigned, the message named van den Bergh as the person whod reported the Franks hiding place to the Nazis. "On face value, you would think, okay, we found the guy," Pankoke said. He was the warehouse manager as well as the father of Bep, who worked in the office and was one of the helpers. After all, one of her sisters and her father joined the high-risk effort of hiding, feeding, and sustaining eight Jewish fugitives. [My mother] often lived in the past after the war and mulled over the split she found herself in: the loss of her Jewish loved ones from the Annex on the one hand, and her loyalty to her sister [Nelly] who had proven her services to the occupier on the other hand, wrote Van Wijk. 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. 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. Updated: March 29, 2023 | Original: November 1, 2017. Advertising Notice As fast as they could, they all fled back to the hiding place. Now, a biographer of Anne Frank has published a new theory which has intrigued the nation and revived a dark chapter in Dutch history - the failure to protect Jewish citizens from the genocidal Nazis. Her writing created a trail to judicial documents from other parts of the Netherlands, resulting in the latest theory.
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