Investigators Are Turning to Big Data to Find Who Betrayed Anne Frank. Ahlers himself was jailed for collaboration after the war and bizarrely Otto wrote letters to the authorities pleading for his release. First published on January 16, 2022 / 8:09 PM. Records discovered in the Dutch national archives by journalist Pieter van Twisk, co-founder of the research project, seemingly corroborated the claim, suggesting that a member of Amsterdams Jewish Council turned over lists of addresses where Jews were hiding. We question several elements of the investigation: read our statement. It is believed, however, that documents pertaining to Anne Frank and other residents of the annex were destroyed in a 1940s bombing. 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. The enduring mystery of the Anne Frank story is, who betrayed her to the Nazis? It's been such a long time, and most of the people who knew are dead.". [Otto Frank] might have done this out of loyalty for my mother, wrote Van Wijk. ", Patricia Bosboom, of the Anne Frank Foundation which maintains the house where Anne hid, said Lee's theory was plausible, "but it's still only a theory. 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. The people in hiding slept through the first one, in July 1943. And the people in hiding had to be very careful as well. At the warehouse on the ground floor, the officers addressed employee Willem van Maaren. We dont have 100 percent certainty. 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. Anne was especially sorry about the latter, because it would be difficult to replace that many coupons. 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. Anne often wrote about good-natured Bep in her diary, including happenings in the large Voskuijl family of eight siblings. 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. Specifically, the author believes Nelly was involved in the betrayal of the so-called Secret Annex Jews, including the iconic teenage diarist. 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. His aunts past as a Nazi collaborator, as well as her whereabouts during a key part of the hiding period, had been covered up by the family. Those hiding in the annex were wary of Van Maaren, and Anne Frank documented their suspicion in her diary. It was edited by Will Croxton. When the people in hiding put it back, it was brutally kicked in again. It probably never will be. Ahlers had so much information on Otto Frank. Who Betrayed Anne Frank? Part One : r/UnresolvedMysteries - Reddit During the next six months a team of experts from the Netherlands' Institute for War Documentation (NIWD) will pore over government records drawn up at the end of the war which detail the extent of Dutch collaboration with the Nazis. There was one sister, however, who took a different path, Van Wijk was told growing up. After the war, Otto Frank, the only member of his family who survived the Holocaust, made statements indicating he knew who his betrayer was. The people in hiding in the Secret Annex were terrified when someone broke into the business premises. 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. Per BBC, he wasn't deported and had lost his Jewish identity during the war. Stockroom manager Willem van Maaren was suspected of the betrayal for many years, although he never sided with the Nazis. Bruce Springsteen on "Nebraska," and the emergence of Springsteen the poet Ahlers was among the suspects Pankoke and his team investigated and ultimately ruled out. | READ MORE. In 1947, Otto Frank and the helpers filed a complaint against him with the political police on suspicion of betrayal. These include Lena Hartog, the wife of one of the warehouse employees; and Nelly Voskuijl, the sister of one of the Franks helpers. In the years following Nelly Voskuijls death in 2001, Van Wijk attempted to learn more about the relationship between his mother and his aunt from members of the large family. Click the link in that email to complete your registration. In the middle of war, Nelly moved to Austria with a Nazi officer, only to have the relationship fall apart. display: none; believe the most likely culprit is a local Jewish leader named Arnold van den Bergh. "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. They had to act as if everything was normal. Among other investigative strategies, they used artificial intelligence to sift through reams of data and original documents. Left unsigned, the message named van den Bergh as the person who'd reported the Franks' hiding place to the Nazis. 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. 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. He long suspected his family was turned in by Willem van Maaren, a recently hired employee who was not in on the secret behind the bookcase. "And we went into the city archive and found proof that actually he was 'Aryanized,' so he lost his Jewish identity 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. He stole goods and was generally considered dishonest. At one point, Kugler was prepared to end his marriage in order to move to South America with Voskuijl, but she did not want to wreck their marriage. In her diary, Anne reported various attempted burglaries and actual burglaries. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday. War diary of life in hiding became world bestseller The Diary of Anne Frank, first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl, is one of the most widely read books in the world. Not even the arresting officer questioned after the war by Simon Wiesenthal, the Austrian Nazi hunter, could say who the caller was and investigators are convinced that no written record of the caller's identity exists. I think he is the one who gave away the Franks' whereabouts to the caller although I don't think he physically made the call himself.". The Amsterdam home where she and her family hid is today a museum known as the Anne Frank House. The business continued to operate while the Franks were in hiding, although it apparently was no longer trading with the Germans. But all ofthe other people who were in hiding, and their collaborators, theyre just as important; theyre just not as famous.. Historians have proposed competing hypotheses without definitive proof . Meilan Solly Although he heard about Nellys romantic liaisons with Germans while growing up, Van Wijk was never told about his aunts role as a Nazi collaborator. 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? 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. 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. For decades suspicion centred on a man called Willem Van Maaren, who worked in the warehouse attached to the Franks' hiding place. Who betrayed the Franks and why? The time will come when we will be people again and not just Jews! 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. The case. Willem Gerardus van Maaren (August 10, 1895- November 28, 1971) was the person most often suggested as the betrayer of Anne Frank. The key to the mystery proved to be a note sent to Otto Frank shortly after his return to Amsterdam in June 1945. Pankoke also showed Wertheim a note, which investigators say Otto Frank received after the war, that specifically names Van den Bergh as the betrayer. Who betrayed the Anne Frank family? Here's what we know now Willem van Maaren began working as the warehouse manager in 1943, one year before the secret annex was raided by police. The authors suspicions were deepened during interviews he conducted for the biography. Willem van Maaren was one of the warehouse staff. 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. This theory holds that Nellywho returned to Amsterdam in 1943 when her romance souredmay have been the anonymous female caller who (allegedly) tipped off the SS about the Secret Annex, per the testimony of SS officer Karl Josef Silberbauer, who made the arrests. 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 . Many experts believe that someone alerted Nazi authorities to the hiding place, but the identity of the culprit has never been conclusively determined. These are two of the most frequently asked questions when it comes to Anne Frank. Apparently, the burglars were still about. The note came to authorities' attention during a 1963 investigation into the. Suddenly, a passer-by used a flashlight to take a look inside. Another book posited that the suspect might be a Jewish woman. . 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.. 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. In 2022,The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigationwhich details the findings of Pankoke's investigationcited Arnold van den Bergh, a Jewish businessman and member of the Jewish Council in Holland, as the culprit. Pankoke's team wondered: Did the suspected betrayer know the location of the secret annex? The Anne Frank House undertook its own investigation and arrived at a surprising new theory in 2017, thanks to the efforts of a historian named Gertjan Brock. When the arrest of Anne Frank and the people who hid with her took place, Van Maaren worked as the manager of the warehouse of Opekta and Gies & Co, in whose buildings the Secret Annex was situated. Kugler and Kleiman were also arrested and held at a penal camp for "enemies of the regime.". As fast as they could, they all fled back to the hiding place. Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Miep Gies, and Bep Voskuijl were the only employees who knew where the Franks (and later, the Van Pels family) were hiding. Thats obvious, said Bertus Hulsman, who was the wartime boyfriend of Voskuijl and sometimes mentioned in the diary. And then they heard the footsteps leave again. Lee "has no proof, but I can imagine this was the case. More than 100,000 Dutch Jews - 70 percent of the community - were deported to concentration camps in Germany. 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.. "I think that people that are looking at this feel, 'Ah, maybe we can learn something if this case is solved,'" Pankoke said. But Barnouw said Lee's case sounded credible enough for the institute to reopen its investigation into the betrayal. They were successful, and the burglars ran off. 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. All rights reserved. Born in 1949, Van Wijk remembers a childhood shrouded in mystery about what Nelly did during the war. Certainly, Maarten Kuiper received money for the betrayals he made.". 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. Now, according to Daniel Boffey of the Guardian, a retired FBI agent has launched an investigation into the enduring historical mystery, hoping to find out once and for all who betrayed the young diarist. Were they betrayed? Anne Frank Study Guide: Deaths, Dates, Betrayal, and History - Quizlet Former FBI special agent Vincent Pankoke was looking forward to a relaxing retirement hanging out at the beach when he left the agency. ", Dutch historians investigate new claims to identity of person who revealed hiding place of Jewish family, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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. ", Photo of Ans van Dijk courtesy of Ben van Meerendonk/IISH. Additionally, believes Van Wijk, Otto Frank either suspected or knew of Nelly Voskuijls role in the betrayal. Experts have discovered, for instance, the identity of a person who betrayed at least one other family to the Nazis. The second major burglary in the night of 9 to 10 April 1944 was much more serious. Ars may earn compensation on sales from links on this site. According to Pankoke, for Van den Bergh to have that level of protection, he must have had some leverage with the Nazis. Miep Gies :: The betrayal The eight people in hiding did not trust him, and often felt suspicious of him. After all, one of her sisters and her father joined the high-risk effort of hiding, feeding, and sustaining eight Jewish fugitives. We had all stopped breathing audibly by then, 8 hearts were pounding, footsteps on our stairs, then a rattling on the bookcase door.' Erik Somers, a historian at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, praised the depth of the investigation but criticized its conclusion. Privacy Statement Summer of 1933. . In April 1944 Anne wrote: "One day this terrible war will be over. Willem van Maaren was the traitor. 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. Please enter valid email address to continue. ", Barnouw told The Associated Press he and another colleague will review old files and testimony for new revelations. And, during a 1994 lecture, Secret Annex helper Miep Gies let slip that the informant died prior to 1960. Brigit Katz is a freelance writer based in Toronto. That evening, Peter heard sounds from the warehouse. Registering also lets you comment on articles and helps us improve your experience. Anne died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen in the spring of 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated. 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. A Dutch newspaper, Het Parool, printed a story about Anne's diary which aroused the interest of a publishing house. Who betrayed Anne Frank? A new book tracks history's most - MSN Even during the early days of the war, the Voskuijl family faced trouble with Nelly. "She was out of town working not close to Amsterdam. The first police investigation: Was WILLEM VAN MAAREN the betrayer? Did Willem van Maaren betray the Franks? 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. Fox on Parkinson's, and maintaining optimism Since then, several independent investigations have identified different possible suspects. 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. 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.". It has been translated into 70 languages and inspired a theatrical play and subsequent Oscar-winning 1959 film, featuring Millie Perkins in the title role. Wootson Jr. of the Post reports that the teams work will be chronicled in a podcast and, possibly, a documentary. For instance, Melissa Muller's 1998 biography of Anne Frank concluded that a woman named Lena Hartog, wife of the company's assistant warehouse manager, betrayed the family. Was Anne Frank betrayed? | Anne Frank House It takes just a few seconds. In that statement we indicated the need for further research. There was another important reason Pankoke crossed Van Dijk off the list of suspects. Who Betrayed Anne Frank? A New Study Suggests Nobody Did - Yahoo News Hermann van Pels hit the ground with an axe, which finally drove them away. 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. Wertheim spoke with Vince Pankoke, a retired FBI agent. Historians made no further headway. Only the father, Otto Frank, survived. 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. January 16, 2022 / 8:09 PM The people in hiding did not sleep a wink for the rest of the night. "On face value, you would think, okay, we found the guy," Pankoke said. Updated: March 29, 2023 | Original: November 1, 2017. I take both of these theories seriously enough to put them on paper but that is different from actually saying what happened. Shortly after World War II ended, Otto Frank suggested that the culprit was Willem van Maaren, a warehouse employee who was not in on the secret. 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. God truly protected us ,Anne wrote in her diary, much relieved. "Number one, that during the time period of the betrayal, she wasn't in town," Pankoke explained. Nelly knew that Bep and her father were helping Jews. "He was a Dutch Nazi, a well-known traitor and an anti-semite and was very anti-Jewish. 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. A new book suggests the informant may have been a business associate of Anne's father, the only family member to survive World War II. During the day we always have to walk quietly and speak softly, the people in the warehouse mustnt hear us, Anne wrote in her diary (11 July 1942). Their biggest fear was that the police would come back again, but fortunately, that didn't happen. At the time of Bep Voskuijls death in 1983, she was the least known of the four Dutch resisters who helped hide Anne Frank. Investigators Are Turning to Big Data to Find Who Betrayed Anne Frank 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. Beginning in 2016, Pankoke led a team of expert investigators equipped with modern crime-solving techniques to try to crack the case. She was 15 at the time of her death. The warehouse workers were not to know that there were people hiding in the Secret Annex. .component--type-recirculation .item:nth-child(5) { And who among us, if our families were on the line and heading to extermination camps, wouldnt do what we could? Preview: Michael J. A petty thief and unsavory braggart, Van Maaren was investigated shortly after the war, but nothing was proved. So now we have a request. 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. It is still early days for the investigation, but Pankoke told Wootson Jr. of the Post that the team has already produced some interesting information. It is my contribution to peace, understanding, respect, and above all loyalty to every human being.. 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. My aunt Willy [Nellys sister] was furious until she died in 2015, just before the publication, he said. For more than seven decades, investigators, researchers and journalists have been trying to shed light on the mysterious circumstances surrounding the arrest of Anne Frank, who famously captured the rise of Nazism in her poignant, posthumously published diary. 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. The case against Ahlers fell apart, Pankoke told Wertheim, when it came to knowledge. 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. Anne Franks father Ottothe only member of the family to survive their subsequent deportation to the concentration campswas among the first to assert that a betrayal had led to their capture.
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