Evidence of his involvement was never found. Trending News For example, it is certain that two representatives from whom the helpers bought illegal coupons were arrested for black marketeering. Although Joop van Wijks book follows the course of his mothers life, the suspense swirls around his late aunt Nelly, Voskuijls sister. All the more so because betrayal was never established beyond a doubt. The case. The enduring mystery of the Anne Frank story is, who betrayed her to the Nazis? ", Photo of Ans van Dijk courtesy of Ben van Meerendonk/IISH. Who betrayed the Franks and why? 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. The diary was given to Anne on her 13th birthday, just weeks before she and her family went into hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. They didn't flee quite far enough: the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands began in May 1940 and eventually forced the Franks (and many other Jews) into hiding. Were they betrayed? Fox on Parkinson's, and maintaining optimism Stockroom manager Willem van Maaren was suspected of the betrayal for many years, although he never sided with the Nazis. Instead, the groups arrest could have been a tragic accident. Then, in 2016, a team of investigators, led by a veteran FBI agent, decided to bring modern. Erik Somers, a historian at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, praised the depth of the investigation but criticized its conclusion. . Voskuijls father, Johan, was also in on the secret of the Jews in hiding. When they came to raid the building, they unexpectedly discovered Anne and the others. It was only accessible via a door on the landing, kept hidden by a bookcase. Two Dutch investigations, in 1947-48 and 1963-64, targeted the warehouse manager, Willem van Maaren, but were inconclusive. She was 15 at the time of her death. "We are interested, that's for sure," said David Barnouw, a researcher and spokesman of the government-financed historical institute. Beginning in 2016, Pankoke led a team of expert investigators equipped with modern crime-solving techniques to try to crack the case. According to the researchers, the German Sicherheitsdienst police who discovered the family usually investigated cases involving cash and securities, not Jews in hiding. If so, please join The Times of Israel Community. 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. All rights reserved. "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. 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. They were successful, and the burglars ran off. Your Privacy Rights Nobody knows for sure who betrayed the Franks, but after doing research, I believe that Tony Ahlers is guilty. Lages answered that the credibility of the tip-off would have been checked first, unless it came from an informant who had proved to be reliable before. 2023 TIME USA, LLC. He was the warehouse manager as well as the father of Bep, who worked in the office and was one of the helpers. The people in hiding decided not to wait but to take action. Lena had already lost her son in the war, the theory goes, and her husband worked for Otto's food preservatives firm. Kugler was a married man, and he never shared the secret of the hidden Jews with his wife, wrote Van Wijk. A family's darkest secret sheds light on an enduring mystery, Were really pleased that youve read, Please use the following structure: example@domain.com, Send me The Times of Israel Daily Edition. Nevertheless, Lee's book "is interesting because it takes a more balanced view of Otto Frank," Barnouw said. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. display: none; It was edited by Will Croxton. A Dutch newspaper, Het Parool, printed a story about Anne's diary which aroused the interest of a publishing house. All rights reserved. So now we have a request. First Republic Bank seized by regulators, then sold to JPMorgan Chase, Reward offered as manhunt for Texas shooting suspect reaches "dead end", Louisiana's health care deserts put women, babies at risk, doctors say, Second convoy of U.S. citizens fleeing Khartoum arrives at Port Sudan, ISIS chief killed by Turkey's intelligence agency, Erdogan says, How a tall Texan became an unlikely Australian rules football star, General Mills issues Gold Medal flour recall over salmonella concerns, Investors sue Adidas over Kanye West Yeezy deal, Shaquil Barrett's 2-year-old daughter dies in drowning accident, Anne Franks betrayal: Investigating other suspects, Louisiana doctors detail unintended consequences of state's abortion ban, Scaling up carbon capture to make an impact. The people in hiding in the Secret Annex were terrified when someone broke into the business premises. Otto, for his part, never publicly named van den Bergh, who died in 1950, as the informant. 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. The evidence that led Pankoke's investigators to their conclusion pointed to the alleged betrayer as much as it ruled out other suspects including some who had previously been the subject of speculation. Among other activities, the Frank sisters took correspondence courses in Voskuijls name, and the administrative assistant put aside filing for the sisters to do at night. When Frank returned from Auschwitz in 1945, having lost his wife and two daughters, he may have feared his company would be confiscated if his prewar business with Germany became known. The second theory, put forward by Austrian writer Melissa Mller, has a cleaning lady in the warehouse, Lena Hartog, as the traitor. 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. WIRED Media Group Last week, the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam released a study that suggests that Anne Frank and the seven others hiding with her were discovered by chance. "There was a lot of information that pointed to Tonny Ahlers as being a potential suspect," Pankoke said. 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. My sister and my oldest brother are still angry with me about the content of the book, Van Wijk told The Times of Israel. It was clear that Tonny Ahlers had no knowledge that Otto Frank and the others were hiding in the annex.". 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. Privacy Statement At the time of Bep Voskuijls death in 1983, she was the least known of the four Dutch resisters who helped hide Anne Frank. Those hiding in the annex were wary of Van Maaren, and Anne Frank documented their suspicion in her diary. .component--type-recirculation .item:nth-child(5) { [Otto Frank] might have done this out of loyalty for my mother, wrote Van Wijk. 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. I take both of these theories seriously enough to put them on paper but that is different from actually saying what happened. He needed the money and he needed the authorities' protection because his own business had gone bankrupt. As he tells Anthony Deutsch and Stephanie van den Berg of Reuters, van den Bergh was a very influential man who couldve avoided deportation for any number of reasons. 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 people in hiding shared their suspicion, without knowing him or even having seen him. There is no smoking gun because betrayal is circumstantial.. Thats obvious, said Bertus Hulsman, who was the wartime boyfriend of Voskuijl and sometimes mentioned in the diary. 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. / CBS News. 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. As Pankoke tells 60 Minutes, the team managed to track down a copy of the note after reaching out to the son of one of the 1963 investigators. Nelly fell in love with a young Austrian Nazi and had worked for a year on a German air base. }. ", Barnouw told The Associated Press he and another colleague will review old files and testimony for new revelations. The groups hideout was located inside a warehouse he had once owned, and they were aided by several of his employees as well as other Dutch sympathizers. After Lee's book was published, Ahlers' son was quoted as saying he was convinced her theory is true. His name was Anton Ahlers. Your California Privacy Rights | Do Not Sell My Personal Information Victor Kugler believed he placed small pieces of wood and other items in the warehouse, in such a way that in the morning he could see if anyone had been there. Hermann van Pels hit the ground with an axe, which finally drove them away. Anne wrote about it in her diary and attributed negative qualifications to him. And probably wasn't capable of betrayal, because had he betrayed the annex, he knew that he would end up losing his job." The most believable suspect was Arnold van den Bergh, a prominent Jewish businessman in the city who lived a lavish life during the holocaust. He only stuck to the logic of assumptions of which he did not know the validity, nor did he need to know the validity in order to give a reasoned answer. Apparently, the burglars were still about. The first police investigation: Was WILLEM VAN MAAREN the betrayer? This is not the first time that hopes of unlocking the mystery have been raised. The case. First Republic Bank seized by regulators, then sold to JPMorgan Chase, Reward offered as manhunt for Texas shooting suspect reaches "dead end", Louisiana's health care deserts put women, babies at risk, doctors say, Second convoy of U.S. citizens fleeing Khartoum arrives at Port Sudan, ISIS chief killed by Turkey's intelligence agency, Erdogan says, How a tall Texan became an unlikely Australian rules football star, General Mills issues Gold Medal flour recall over salmonella concerns, Investors sue Adidas over Kanye West Yeezy deal, Shaquil Barrett's 2-year-old daughter dies in drowning accident, Michael J. In Anne's diary it becomes clear that the Annex occupants also did not trust him. Johan was important to them because he could keep an eye on the other warehouse workers to see if they noticed anything. 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. The Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, the researchers who published the authoritative version the diary and the caretaker of the Frank papers, said Ahlers had not been a suspect until Lee started probing his background for her book, "The Hidden Life of Otto Frank," published in March. 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. Van Maaren was later the subject of multiple investigations related to the betrayalincluding one by famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthalbut he always maintained his innocence, and none of the cases ever produced any evidence against him. 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. Frank wist wie hem weghaalde, De Telegraaf, 22 November 1963. He worked in the same building where the Franks were hiding.. In 1963, the SS officer who conducted the annex raid told investigators a young woman made the betrayal call. Potential informants ruled out by the group ranged from Willem van Maaren, an oft-cited suspect who worked in the warehouse where the Franks were hiding, to Nelly Voskuijl, a Nazi sympathizer and the sister of Secret Annex helper Bep Vokuijl, to Ans van Dijk, a Jewish collaborator whose actions led to the arrest of some 145 people. The video above was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and Will Croxton. All Rights Reserved. Brigit Katz Willem Gerardus van Maaren (August 10, 1895- November 28, 1971) was the person most often suggested as the betrayer of Anne Frank. You couldn't just do that.". 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. 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. 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. Van Dijk was executed after the war for collaborating with the Nazis and betraying dozens of fellow Jews. Two Dutch police inquiries and countless historians have come up with theories, but no firm conclusion. There's no evidence to indicate that he knew who was hiding at any of these addresses, Pankoke tells 60 Minutes. [But] when van den Bergh lost all his series of protections exempting him from having to go to the camps, he had to provide something valuable to the Nazis that he's had contact with to let him and his wife at that time stay safe.. In other words: If a call was actually made that morning, and the response was immediate, then one may conclude that the informant was known and reliable, according to Lages. This theory holds that the officers just happened to stumble upon the Jewish families hiding in the attic. Jennifer Ouellette Sign me up , CNMN Collection That same week, the Franks were arrestedwhile Van Dijk was away in the Hague. The proof is not final. Van Wijk had always been told Nelly did not return to the Netherlands until the end of 1944 or early in 1945 after the betrayal of the annex. 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. In 1947, Otto Frank and the helpers filed a complaint against him with the political police on suspicion of betrayal. 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. Wilhelm van Maaren One of the people who has. Around the time of Nellys return, her relations with the family strongly deteriorated, wrote Van Wijk, including Johan Voskuijl physically beating his daughter. He was not betraying Otto Frank., Ronald Leopold, director of the Anne Frank House, points out that many missing pieces of the puzzle remain, telling the AP, I dont think we can say that [the] mystery has been solved now.. Many experts believe that someone alerted Nazi authorities to the hiding place, but the identity of the culprit has never been conclusively determined. Kremer's father was an acquaintance ofVan Dijk in Amsterdam and Kremer writes that in early August 1944, his father overheardVan Dijkspeaking about Prinsengracht, where the Franks were hiding, in Nazi offices. That was quite a feat. Almost everyone involved with the case is dead and many historians believe that it is simply impossible to identify the culprit who betrayed the young girl whose poignant diary subsequently sold more than 31 million copies and made her one of the Holocaust's most famous victims. Clearly, the museums report concludes, the last word about that fateful summer day in 1944 has not yet been said.. Searching for Anne Frank's betrayer, 80 years on. warehouse employee named Willem van Maaren, who had sparked concerns among the Franks and the people who helped them hide . According to the author, he has mostly been met by cold shoulders. Ms Lee also claims that Ahlers was blackmailing Otto, first in 1941 by threatening to release a letter which would have led to his deportation, and astonishingly after the war too and even as recently as 1980 when Otto died. For a long time, betrayal was considered to be the reason for the arrest of the people in hiding, but the focus is shifting, as there are several other options. Most were gassed with brutal assembly-line efficiency. "He may have got money for it. One of the reasons his aunt has been overlooked by past investigators, believes Van Wijk, involves his familys darkest secret. . The eight people in hiding did not trust him, and often felt suspicious of him. Meilan Solly Anne, who is famous for documenting her time in the Secret Annex in her renowned diary, died of typhus in the spring of 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. "I think he actually made the call. Another book posited that the suspect might be a Jewish woman. In 1947, Otto Frank and the helpers filed a complaint against him with the political police on suspicion of betrayal. "He was a Dutch Nazi, a well-known traitor and an anti-semite and was very anti-Jewish. For decades suspicion centred on a man called Willem Van Maaren, who worked in the warehouse attached to the Franks' hiding place. Despite two investigations into his . And who among us, if our families were on the line and heading to extermination camps, wouldnt do what we could? The people in hiding slept through the first one, in July 1943. After discovering some of the familys long-held secrets, Van Wijk now believes there is an unsettling reason behind his mothers relative anonymity among the helpers. On 17 January 2022 the cold case teampresentedtheir findings. The new investigation does not refute the possibility that the people in hiding were betrayed, but illustrates that other scenarios should also be considered.. Now, about 72 years later, the world may have an answer to the mystery: Maybe nobody betrayed them at all. Although Miep Gies is the best-remembered of the Dutch helpers, Voskuijl was the closest to Anne in age and temperament. That report, written by senior historian Gertjan Broek, argued that the German Security Service might have simply stumbled upon the eight Jews while raiding the premises to search for fraudulent food-ration cards. It has been widely believed that Willem van Maaren, a warehouse employee who worked for Otto Frank, outed the Frank family. Daniel Finkelstein reflects on the tragedy of the Frank family as a new book, published this week, delves into the riddle of who revealed their . Already a member? Pankoke also showed Wertheim a note, which investigators say Otto Frank received after the war, that specifically names Van den Bergh as the betrayer. There were two separate official investigations into who may have betrayed the family: one in 1947-1948 and the second (conducted by the Dutch police) in 1963-1964. Investigators began taking a fresh look at the case in 2016, hoping to provide new answers. According to Pankoke, Van Dijk had betrayed the family of Otto Frank's second wife. 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. But despite suspicions, there was no conclusive evidence van Maaren betrayed the family. Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. It has been translated into around 67 languages and has sold over 31 million copies. The German-born Frank, who moved to Holland in 1933, ran a spice-trading company that sold goods to the Wehrmacht, the German army. The trove of information is so large that a human in their lifetime might not be able to review it, Pankoke tells Stephanie van den Berg andAnthony Deutsch of Reuters. The book, released in English yesterday, points the finger of blame at a man called Anton Ahlers, a business associate of Otto's and a committed Nazi. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our, Digital Click the link in that email to complete registration so you can comment. 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. Though the Nazis dissolved the council in September 1943, sending most of its members to concentration and death camps, van den Bergh and his family managed to escape deportationan exemption indicating that the notary had some kind of leverage, according to Pankoke. Prior to that, Frank always said he did not want to know who betrayed his family. Explanations for the discovery are mainly based on testimonies, because no documents about the raid on the Secret Annex have been preserved. Barnouw, the historian, said the blackmail supposition is thin. It is believed, however, that documents pertaining to Anne Frank and other residents of the annex were destroyed in a 1940s bombing. Fifteen-year-old Anne, her sister Margot and her mother Edith died in Nazi concentration camps. 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. Photo collection: Nationaal Archief/ Anefo, access number 2.24.01.04, item number 919-6449. Her writing created a trail to judicial documents from other parts of the Netherlands, resulting in the latest theory. My mother had lots of troubles with Nelly during the war and after the war, Van Wijk told The Times of Israel. Join the Ars Orbital Transmission mailing list to get weekly updates delivered to your inbox. A six-year investigation posits that Arnold van den Bergh disclosed the diarists hiding place to protect his family from deportation, On August 1, 1944, 15-year-old Anne Frank penned a journal entry describing herself as a bundle of contradictions. Reflecting on the warring sides of her personality, the Jewish diarist wrote, Im guided by the pure Anne within, but on the outside Im nothing but a frolicsome little goat tugging at its tether. She concluded with a pledge to keep trying to find a way to become what Id like to be and what I could be if if only there were no other people in the world.. "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. 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. 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. For two years, Anne Frank's family hid in secret rooms in Amsterdam, knowing that a curtain left open by mistake, a wayward noise or a nervous conspirator's phone call to the Nazis could land. 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. When did the Van Pels (Van . For decades suspicion centred on a man called Willem Van Maaren, who worked in the warehouse attached to the Franks' hiding place. He found Voskuijl in a desperate state with a mouthful of sleeping pills. She made him keep the episode their secret, he wrote. Willem van Maaren began working as the warehouse manager in 1943, one year before the secret annex was raided by police. This week on 60 Minutes, correspondent Jon Wertheim reported on a new look into the decades-old question that has dogged many readers of Anne Frank's diary: Who betrayed the Frank family and led a search team to their secret annex hidden behind a bookcase?
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