Anne Frank, who is best known for chronicling the harsh realities of the lives of Dutch Jews hiding from Nazis in her personal diary, is one of the most prominent faces of the tragedies of World War 2. And now, over 77 years since her death, the suspect who betrayed her and her family to the Nazi has been identified, according to a new book 'The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation' by Rosemary Sullivan.
Anne Frank and her family along with a few other Jews hid in a secret annex in Amsterdam for two years. During this time (1942-1944) Anne Frank wrote about her life in hiding from the Nazis and she wished to publish a book about it sometime. Unfortunately, on August 4, 1944, they were discovered by the Nazis and deported; Anne died in the Bergen Belsen camp at the age of 15 in 1945. Fulfilling her wish to be an author, her diary was later published posthumously by her father Otto Frank in 1947 as 'The Diary of a Young Girl'. Since then the book has become one of the most horrific accounts of the Holocaust.
A Jewish notary is identified as the main suspect who may have betrayed Anne Frank and her family by telling about their whereabouts to the Nazis, which led to their death. An AFP report reads: Arnold van den Bergh may have revealed the Franks' hiding place in Amsterdam to the Nazis in a bid to save his own family, according to the six-year inquiry led by a former FBI agent. The evidence comes from modern data-crunching techniques combined with a long-lost, anonymous note sent to Anne's father Otto naming Van den Bergh, according to the new book about the investigation.
Van den Bergh was a founding member of the Jewish Council, an administrative body that the Nazis forced Jews to establish to organise deportations from the Netherlands. Investigators found he had initially managed to get his family exempted from being transported. But this was revoked around the time of the raid on the Franks, leading them to suspect he may have betrayed their hiding place to save his own children. He would also have had the opportunity to pass on the information, as he had been the notary for a German art dealer's sale of a collection of looted Jewish art to senior Nazi Hermann Goering.
But the most convincing element for the investigators was the seriousness with which Otto Frank treated the allegation. Anne's father told detectives in 1964 that he had received a note shortly after the war naming Van den Bergh as the betrayer of his family, and of several other people. A copy made by Frank of the note was found by the team in a police officer's archives.
The team discounted some 30 other theories, such as a long-running suspicion that it was linked to black market activity, or just a coincidence, the investigators said. "We do not have a smoking gun, but we do have a hot weapon with empty casings next to it," Pankoke was quoted as saying by Dutch public broadcaster NOS.
The findings, published in full in Rosemary Sullivan's book 'The Betrayal of Anne Frank', are already provoking soul-searching in the Netherlands. Ronald Leopold, executive director of the Anne Frank House, told AFP that the probe had "generated important new information". But he said that questions remained, in particular about who had sent the anonymous note, and why. "You have to be very careful about sending someone down in history as a traitor to Anne Frank if you are not 100 or 200 percent sure about that," he added.
Investigators believed Otto Frank may not have publicised the note for fear that the discovery a Jewish person was behind the betrayal could have stoked further anti-Semitism.
Thijs Bayens, the Dutch film-maker behind the project, told 60 Minutes that the aim was not to demonise the betrayer, since it was the Nazis who had after all "brought people to do these terrible things". "The real question is: what would I have done?" he said.
(With inputs from AFP)
