Who betrayed Anne Frank?

There is a new truth about the whereabouts of Anna Frank and his family. They were allegedly betrayed by a Jewish notary who revealed the address of their hiding place to the Nazis according to a six-year research carried out by a team of historians and other experts. Among them was a former FBI agent. The working group identified in Arnold van den Bergh, a Jewish notary from Amsterdam, the man who allegedly betrayed the Franks to save his family. Not all historians share this reconstruction which, however, sheds new light on a story known to the whole world. More than thirty million people around the world have read the Diary of Anne Frank, the pages to which the thirteen-year-old Jewish woman entrusted the story of the two years she spent hidden with her family and four other people in the secret house in the back of a building in Amsterdam.

Rosemary Sullivan, Who Betrayed Anne Frank. Investigation of an unsolved case, HarperCollins, € 19.50, 447 pages, translated by Daniela Liucci

In April 2017, Vince Pankoke went to Amsterdam to meet with the Unresolved Case Team. Until then they had only had one contact via Skype. Thijs Bayens wanted to launch the investigation with a video pilot to ascertain any media interest in the project. He began filming Vince as the team created reconstructions of investigation testimony with Dutch actors.

Vince used the time with Thijs, Pieter van Twisk and Jean Hellwig to inspect the Amsterdam city archives; at the NIOD, the Institute for Studies on War, Genocide and the Holocaust; and the Anne Frank House, which they had been invited to visit on their own early in the morning, before the crowds of tourists arrived. For Vince, already so immersed in Anne’s story, reflecting on what had happened within those walls was a powerful experience. Crucial in that phase was his meeting with the scientists of Xomnia, an Amsterdam-based data company that offered to provide the foundation for the artificial intelligence program (AI) that Microsoft later agreed to develop for the team’s research. Everyone knew that artificial intelligence would change the investigation into the blitz: it would allow the team to collect the millions of details that revolved around the case and make connections between previously overlooked people and events.

When Vince got involved in the venture in 2016, he realized he had picked up not just an unsolved case but the quintessential unsolved case. By their nature, such cases remain unsolved due to lack of evidence, or because evidence has been neglected or misinterpreted. As a result, the team had to come up with a plan to combine the proven methodology of cold cases with a historical research model, as they would work primarily with historical accounts of what happened. Upon joining the team, Vince contacted a fellow behavioral specialist, now retired Dr. Roger Depue, legendary industry pioneer and then head of the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit. During several long lunches in Manassas, a suburb of Washington, DC, Virginia, Depue and Vince discussed how to approach the investigation. They both knew that Vince would only have one chance to solve this case and that he had to make the most of it.

As the Unresolved Cases Team knew from the start, there had been only two official police investigations into the betrayal of Anne Frank: the first conducted by the PRA in 1947-1948 and the second by the Dutch police in 1963-1964. The police had never initiated any other official investigation into the treason.

Yet the speculations and, sometimes, the major investigations into the arrest had never stopped. Over the last few decades, many had advanced theories and even today, according to an employee of the Anne Frank House, the most frequently asked question by visitors is: who betrayed Anne Frank?

In 1998, Melissa Muller released Anne Frank. The Biography. Based on his research, he determined that Lena Hartog, the wife of Lammert Hartog, assistant to warehouse keeper Willem van Maaren, was the most likely traitor. Four years later, Carol Ann Lee published The Hidden Life of Otto Frank and presented the theory that the culprit was a shady character named Anton (Tonny) Ahlers. Of course, both theories could not be true and so, under the pressure of increased public attention, NIOD’s David Barnouw and Gerrold van der Stroom decided to reopen the investigation into the case. They limited their attention to three individuals (Willem van Maaren, Lena Hartog and Tonny Ahlers) and dealt only superficially with other theories.

In 2015, the biography of benefactress Bep Voskuijl, written by her son Joop van Wijk and a young Belgian author, Jeroen de Bruyn, was published. In their research, the two discovered that one of Bep’s sisters, Nelly, had caused much suffering in the Voskuijl family due to her involvement with a young Austrian Nazi and, later, her work in occupied France. Tensions in the family had grown so much that Nelly had left home. Bep’s son believed he might have reported the Secret Annex to the German authorities.

In 2017, the Anne Frank House released its own blitz theory, based on the research of historian Gertjan Broek.

The author concluded that although everyone assumed that the Secret Annex had been betrayed, it was not excluded that the SS were simply looking for goods and illegal weapons and therefore had found the Jews by chance. This hypothesis offered a completely new perspective on the case.

Each of these theories had to be examined for credibility.

© 2022 HarperCollins Italia

© 2022 Rosemary Sullivan from Betrayal Media BV

Translation by Daniela Liucci