The enduring mystery of the Anne Frank story is, who betrayed her to the Nazis? More recent research by the Anne Frank House highlights and substantiates the possibility that the reasons for the raid may have been completely different. 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. That was a major setback, because Van Maaren was curious, and he noticed that people had been in the building after closing time. Voskuijls father, Johan, was also in on the secret of the Jews in hiding. Many experts believe that someone alerted Nazi authorities to the hiding place of Frank and her family, but the culprit has never been determined. Although the team's evidence points to Van den Bergh as the prime suspect, they concede this is a circumstantial case. Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window), Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window), Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window), Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window), Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window), The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation, https://www.history.com/news/who-betrayed-anne-frank. Lee said Ahlers probably decided to tip off the authorities after his own company slid into bankruptcy and he no longer needed to do business with Frank's company. Now, about 72 years later, the world may have an answer to the mystery: Maybe nobody betrayed them at all. Michael J. A petty thief and unsavory braggart, Van Maaren was investigated shortly after the war, but nothing was proved. All rights reserved. Hermann van Pels hit the ground with an axe, which finally drove them away. The burglars managed to take two cash boxes containing forty guilders, blank giro and bank cheques, and coupons for 150 kilograms of sugar. To discover the traitor, Pankoke assembled his own crack team of dogged investigators. My sister and my oldest brother are still angry with me about the content of the book, Van Wijk told The Times of Israel. And it really matters to me, and I think it mattered to the group, that that was an anonymous list of addressesthere were no names. Out of all the warehouse staff, only Johan Voskuijl was aware of the presence of the people in hiding. Ars may earn compensation on sales from links on this site. That evening, Peter heard sounds from the warehouse. While his mother referred to as Elli Vossen in The Diary of Anne Frank risked her life to hide eight Jews, his aunt had behaved shamefully during the occupation of the Netherlands, it was whispered. . But two police investigations - one immediately after the. The researchers also investigated the theory, first raised by scholars at the Anne Frank House in 2016, that the SS discovered the hiding place by chance while searching the warehouse for evidence of illegal work and ration coupon fraud. 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. Pankoke and his team are compiling a huge database of other documents that may contain information relevant to the Frank case: lists of Nazi informants, lists of Jews who were turned over to the authorities, names of Gestapo agents who lived in Amsterdam, police records and so on. Gies and Voskuijl were questioned but not detained. Ed Sheeran plays guitar in court in bid to show he didn't steal Marvin Gaye song 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. In this book, he's much more flesh and blood. Another book posited that the suspect might be a Jewish woman. The note came to authorities' attention during a 1963 investigation into the. .component--type-recirculation .item:nth-child(5) { Summer of 1933. . But despite suspicions, there was no conclusive evidence van Maaren betrayed the family. Anne received the famous diary on June 12, 1942, for her 13th birthday, around the time the Gestapo began deporting Jews in Amsterdam. As fast as they could, they all fled back to the hiding place. 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. A detailed picture of the interior of the warehouse, reconstruction (1999). In Van Wijks assessment, there is no doubt Nelly knew about the Jews in hiding. There was more going on in that building than just the hiding of Jews. The burglars had ripped a panel out of the warehouses street door in order to get in. We strive for accuracy and fairness. Who betrayed the Franks and why? 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. "On face value, you would think, okay, we found the guy," Pankoke said. [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. The time will come when we will be people again and not just Jews! Willem van Maaren was the traitor. Per BBC, he wasn't deported and had lost his Jewish identity during the war. Fox on Parkinson's and how he finds "optimism is sustainable", Ed Sheeran plays guitar in court in bid to show he didn't steal Marvin Gaye song, Preview: Michael J. 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. Otto, for his part, never publicly named van den Bergh, who died in 1950, as the informant. "Otto Frank was of no more use to him in that sense, so he betrayed them," Lee said in the television interview. Around the time of Nellys return, her relations with the family strongly deteriorated, wrote Van Wijk, including Johan Voskuijl physically beating his daughter. The house where she and her family hid in a sealed-off room at Prinsengracht 263 in central Amsterdam was turned into a museum in 1960 and receives almost a million visits a year, mainly from the US. 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. As The New York Timesreported, they hoped to bring new technology, including forensic accounting, computer modeling and even crowd sourcing research, to examine existing evidence such as Anne Franks diary and the Amsterdam building where the Franks hid. Maarten Kuiper was one of the major betrayers of Jews in hiding during that time.". Titled Anne Frank: A Cold Case Diary, the investigative project was initiated by filmmaker Thijs Bayens and supported through crowd funding. Did Willem van Maaren betray the Franks? Investigators began taking a fresh look at the case in 2016, hoping to provide new answers. 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. 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. Van Dijk was executed after the war for collaborating with the Nazis and betraying dozens of fellow Jews. Prior to that, Frank always said he did not want to know who betrayed his family. 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. Ahlers was a member of the Dutch Nazi NSB movement, appeared in Nazi propaganda films and was thrown out of his lodgings after his landlady discovered a swastika flag on the wall and a uniform bearing SS insignia hanging in his wardrobe. } Nevertheless, researchers do not rule out the potential that Frank and the others were the victims of a betrayal. Investigators Are Turning to Big Data to Find Who Betrayed Anne Frank. Cookie Settings, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 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. 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. And who among us, if our families were on the line and heading to extermination camps, wouldnt do what we could? I think that nobody can judge van den Bergh who has not been in his position, Sullivan tells the Globe and Mail. 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. Ahlers own son endorsed the theory that his father was the culprit, but a subsequent investigation by Dutch authorities found no hard evidence of his involvement. Born in 1949, Van Wijk remembers a childhood shrouded in mystery about what Nelly did during the war. Lee says Ahlers not only turned in the Frank family, but may have blackmailed Otto Frank for years after the war, receiving payment for his silence about Frank's business with Nazi Germany at the beginning of World War II. My aunt Willy [Nellys sister] was furious until she died in 2015, just before the publication, he said. However, the investigation did not prove his guilt. 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 involvement of Van Dijk, who was executed in 1948 after admitting to collaborating in the capture of 145 people, had been previously claimed. The subject is still being researched. It is believed that an anonymous tip helped guide the Nazis to the secret annex, yet despite decades of investigations, the identity of the informant has never been proven. Wilhelm van Maaren One of the people who has. But then we'll want to be. Not only did he build the famous swinging bookcase to conceal the hiding place, but he served as an unofficial watchman over the annex through his employment in the warehouse below. At the time of Bep Voskuijls death in 1983, she was the least known of the four Dutch resisters who helped hide Anne Frank. All rights reserved. One day during his youth, Van Wijk heard his mother sobbing in the bathroom. 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. Already a member? They had to act as if everything was normal. Pankoke and his team also spent hours looking for clues in the concealed rooms behind an Amsterdam warehouse, where the Frank family and four other Jews lived hidden away for more than two years. #inline-recirc-item--id-a4ef05fe-8c88-11e2-b06b-024c619f5c3d, #right-rail-recirc-item--id-a4ef05fe-8c88-11e2-b06b-024c619f5c3d { 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. He stole goods and was generally considered dishonest. 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. 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.

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