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.. "There's no smoking gun, and the theory has too many loose ends," he said. Then, the team considered the motive. SD big shot Willy Lages knew that the callerwas a well-known informant. Barnouw, the historian, said the blackmail supposition is thin. Later, when father Johan Voskuijl and sister Bep were involved in hiding Jews on the Prinsengracht, Nelly was working for the Nazis across town. 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. Pankoke's team wondered: Did the suspected betrayer know the location of the secret annex? 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. 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. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday. Three days after Frank wrote these wordsthe final entry in her beloved diarySS officers raided her Amsterdam hiding place and arrested its eight inhabitants. Wertheim spoke with Vince Pankoke, a retired FBI agent. See: Barnouw, David & Stroom, Gerrold van der, Who betrayed Anne Frank? Who betrayed Anne Frank? (Amsterdam: NIOD, 2003). Ahlers had so much information on Otto Frank. On a warm August morning in 1944, SS officers stormed into an Amsterdam warehouse and arrested Anne Frank, her parents, her sister and four other Jews who had been hiding in a secret annex at the back of the building. That was a major setback, because Van Maaren was curious, and he noticed that people had been in the building after closing time. Bep Voskuijl was only 18 when she started working for the spice and jam company owned by Otto Frank. Her writing created a trail to judicial documents from other parts of the Netherlands, resulting in the latest theory. 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). } All Rights Reserved. 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. Within five years, she was illegally buying bread and milk for her Jewish friends in hiding and just as important giving them her sought-after company. Fox on Parkinson's, and maintaining optimism Read our affiliate link policy. "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. 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. Prior to that, Frank always said he did not want to know who betrayed his family. 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.". But soon, it proved she was unable to resolve things that way.. Only the father, Otto Frank, survived. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our, Digital Photo collection: Anne Frank Stichting, Amsterdam / photographer: Allard Bovenberg, All 8 of us were just pleased that we had slept so well that night and not heard a thing., We had all stopped breathing audibly by then., Reconstruction: the arrest of the people in hiding. Scholars and the public alike have long debated the identity of the individual (or individuals) who betrayed Frank, her family and the other residents of the so-called Secret Annex. Pankoke and his team eliminated her as a suspect for a few reasons. Nevertheless, Lee's book "is interesting because it takes a more balanced view of Otto Frank," Barnouw said. It claims that Ahlers - then a 26-year- old petty thief - had fallen on hard times by 1944 and desperately needed the bounty paid to Dutch civilians who exposed Jews in their midst. My aunt Willy [Nellys sister] was furious until she died in 2015, just before the publication, he said. Willem van Maaren began working as the warehouse manager in 1943, one year before the secret annex was raided by police. And who among us, if our families were on the line and heading to extermination camps, wouldnt do what we could? In the middle of war, Nelly moved to Austria with a Nazi officer, only to have the relationship fall apart. In 1947, Otto Frank and the helpers filed a complaint against him with the political police on suspicion of betrayal. After the war, Frank removed content from Annes diary regarding Nellys collaboration. Only one of the people in hiding, Franks father, Otto, survived World War II. [Otto Frank] might have done this out of loyalty for my mother, wrote Van Wijk. [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. Suddenly, a passer-by used a flashlight to take a look inside. Historians have proposed competing hypotheses without definitive proof . When did the Van Pels (Van . Anne, her sister and parents, were caught in the two-story annex with Hermann van Pels, who had worked in Frank's company, with van Pels' wife and teen-age son, and with Friedrich Pfeffer, a dentist. But despite suspicions, there was no conclusive evidence van Maaren betrayed the family. 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. Fox on Parkinson's, and maintaining optimism, Bruce Springsteen on "Nebraska," and the emergence of Springsteen the poet, Michael J. Years later, after Anne Frank became famous for her diary, readers wondered what had gone wrong. 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. 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. In 1963, the National Police Internal Investigation Department investigated the raid. Those hiding in the annex were wary of Van Maaren, and Anne Frank documented their suspicion in her diary. It was very dangerous for the people in hiding, because what could they do if they were discovered? #inline-recirc-item--id-a4ef05fe-8c88-11e2-b06b-024c619f5c3d ~ .item:nth-child(5) { 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. #inline-recirc-item--id-a4ef05fe-8c88-11e2-b06b-024c619f5c3d, #right-rail-recirc-item--id-a4ef05fe-8c88-11e2-b06b-024c619f5c3d { Willem Gerardus van Maaren (August 10, 1895- November 28, 1971) was the person most often suggested as the betrayer of Anne Frank. In 1947, Otto Frank and the helpers filed a complaint against him with the political police on suspicion of betrayal. Footsteps on the stairways, people shaking the bookcase. January 16, 2022 / 8:09 PM 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. Incorrect password. In June 1947 1,500 copies of the Dutch edition of the diary were produced. This theory continues on an assumption that in itself is insufficiently proven, that is that betrayal by telephone led to the raid. Willem van Maaren was the traitor. (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). 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. It has been widely believed that Willem van Maaren, a warehouse employee who worked for Otto Frank, outed the Frank family. It was clear that Tonny Ahlers had no knowledge that Otto Frank and the others were hiding in the annex.". The helpers worked in the office above the warehouse. - Jan 22, 2022 10:54 pm UTC. They had to act as if everything was normal. 2023 TIME USA, LLC. Her father, Otto Frank, survived, and spent the rest of his life trying to discover who had betrayed his family. 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.". 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. | The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Magazines, Digital The subject is still being researched. "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. On this page we distinguish the facts from the unproven theories and the absolute falsehoods. 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. In 2022, The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation which details the findings of Pankoke's investigationcited Arnold van den Bergh, a Jewish businessman and member of the. A petty thief and unsavory braggart, Van Maaren was investigated shortly after the war, but nothing was proved. That same week, the Franks were arrestedwhile Van Dijk was away in the Hague. Previously, Voskuijl and others had placed suspicion on a disgruntled male warehouse employee, Willem van Maaren. Was the betrayer antisemitic? 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. And, during a 1994 lecture, Secret Annex helper Miep Gies let slip that the informant died prior to 1960. Fox on Parkinson's: "Every day it gets tougher". However, the two new theories, painstakingly researched by a British and an Austrian author, and presented in separate books, have raised hopes once again and the NIWD is about to discover whether either of the scenarios stands up to close scrutiny. 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. Ars may earn compensation on sales from links on this site. When did the Franks decided to move to the Netherlands due to increasing tensions in Germany? ", Ms Lee is also cautious but believes the secret of who shopped Anne Frank is there to be unearthed. Historians made no further headway. We had all stopped breathing audibly by then, 8 hearts were pounding, footsteps on our stairs, then a rattling on the bookcase door.' Your Privacy Rights Per BBC, he wasn't deported and had lost his Jewish identity during the war. In 2003, Carol Ann Lee came to a different conclusion in her biography of Otto Frank: the culprit was a man named Anton "Tonny" Ahlers, a member of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands. 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. That evening, Peter heard sounds from the warehouse. 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. "But whenever you actually dig into all the evidence, you find out that he wasn't antisemitic. 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. 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. He also was distrustful of the Ahlers family, saying they simply may be seeking notoriety. He stole goods and was generally considered dishonest. 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. Nelly fell in love with a young Austrian Nazi and had worked for a year on a German air base. 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. Preview: Michael J. All Rights Reserved. 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. It is my contribution to peace, understanding, respect, and above all loyalty to every human being.. [T]he list of people who were accused of being involved in the case is too long to include in its entirety, notes the Anne Frank House on its website. This is not the first time that hopes of unlocking the mystery have been raised. The note came to authorities attention during a 1963 investigation into the betrayal but received little notice, with police instead focusing their efforts on suspects such as van Maaren. The second theory, put forward by Austrian writer Melissa Mller, has a cleaning lady in the warehouse, Lena Hartog, as the traitor. The new investigation does not refute the possibility that the people in hiding were betrayed, but illustrates that other scenarios should also be considered.. 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. The warehouse workers were not to know that there were people hiding in the Secret Annex. More recent research by the Anne Frank House highlights and substantiates the possibility that the reasons for the raid may have been completely different. 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. Pankoke's team discovered that Van den Bergh, a prominent Jewish businessman in Amsterdam with a wife and kids, lived an open life in the middle of Nazi-occupied Holland at a time when Jews were being deported to concentration camps. A petty thief and unsavory braggart, Van Maaren was investigated shortly after the war, but nothing was proved. ", 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. We are saved, go on saving us!That is all we can say. (Anne Frank, 11 April 1944. In the years since Anne Franks diary was published, investigators and historians have proposed several other potential informants. 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. My sister and my oldest brother are still angry with me about the content of the book, Van Wijk told The Times of Israel. Certainly, Maarten Kuiper received money for the betrayals he made.". In the immediate aftermath of the war Otto, Anne's father, had trouble finding a publisher for the diary and was told that nobody wanted to read about the Holocaust. 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. Jennifer Ouellette In theory, as Cleve R. Wootson Jr. notes in the Washington Post, the betrayer of the Frank family shouldnt be hard to find; Nazis kept detailed records of all arrests and informants. There is no smoking gun because betrayal is circumstantial.. 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. 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. "We can never be just Dutch, or just English, or whatever, we will always be Jews as well. "I think that people that are looking at this feel, 'Ah, maybe we can learn something if this case is solved,'" Pankoke said. "Sometimes you can go through the same material with fresh eyes. 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. Johannes Kleiman (on the left) and Victor Kugler in front of Prinsengracht 263, 1954. The enduring mystery of the Anne Frank story is, who betrayed her to the Nazis? Left unsigned, the message named van den Bergh as the person whod reported the Franks hiding place to the Nazis. Willy Lages, head of the Amsterdam Sicherheitsdienst. For decades suspicion centred on a man called Willem Van Maaren, who worked in the warehouse attached to the Franks' hiding place. 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. Immediately after the war, Willem van Maaren was the only suspect in the investigation into the raid of the Secret Annex by the Sicherheitsdienst. But Pankoke said Van Maaren did not hold up as a suspect once investigators examined all the information they found. However, the investigation did not prove his guilt. 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. Her work has appeared in a number of publications, including NYmag.com, Flavorwire and Tina Brown Media's Women in the World. The team looked at dozens of potential suspects before arriving at the person they believe likely gave up the Franks' location: Arnold van den Bergh. 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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