Dutch police launched two separate investigations focusing on van Maaren, but did not uncover any conclusive evidence. Nevertheless, Lee's book "is interesting because it takes a more balanced view of Otto Frank," Barnouw said. He found Voskuijl in a desperate state with a mouthful of sleeping pills. She made him keep the episode their secret, he wrote. In the authors opinion, his mother had an internal conflict that led her to opt for as little attention as possible, practically complete radio silence, from the beginning of the Sixties, he wrote. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. 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. 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. We are saved, go on saving us!That is all we can say. (Anne Frank, 11 April 1944. Privacy Statement 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. In 1963, the SS officer. The helpers worked in the office above the warehouse. "His own mother said he had a bad character from birth and that he was always parading his Nazi connections," the author told the Guardian yesterday. 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. Wertheim spoke with Vince Pankoke, a retired FBI agent. When did the Van Pels (Van . 2023 Smithsonian Magazine Nobody knows for sure who betrayed the Franks, but after doing research, I believe that Tony Ahlers is guilty. "Number one, that during the time period of the betrayal, she wasn't in town," Pankoke explained. Most were gassed with brutal assembly-line efficiency. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 1/1/20) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated 1/1/20) and Ars Technica Addendum (effective 8/21/2018). WIRED Media Group They will also scrutinise the letters of Anne's father, Otto, for clues and examine police transcripts of interviews dating back to the 1940s. The people in hiding shared their suspicion, without knowing him or even having seen him. 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. According to the author, he has mostly been met by cold shoulders. After discovering some of the family's long-held secrets, Van Wijk now believes there is an unsettling reason behind his mother's relative "anonymity" among the helpers. But Barnouw said Lee's case sounded credible enough for the institute to reopen its investigation into the betrayal. 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. This should be part of her biography.. 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. Experts have discovered, for instance, the identity of a person who betrayed at least one other family to the Nazis. Van Maaren fought the accusations and rejected a settlement. Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. In her diary, Anne reported various attempted burglaries and actual burglaries. These are two of the most frequently asked questions when it comes to Anne Frank. Around the time of Nellys return, her relations with the family strongly deteriorated, wrote Van Wijk, including Johan Voskuijl physically beating his daughter. 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. They seem to work from the point of view that he was guilty and [find] a motive to fit that, Somers adds. Fox on Parkinson's: "Every day it gets tougher" 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. But all ofthe other people who were in hiding, and their collaborators, theyre just as important; theyre just not as famous.. "Everyone, including his own family, condemned him as distinctly anti-Jewish and a thoroughly unpleasant character.". Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation, The Diary of Anne Frank: the critical edition (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1989)., A-version 21 April 1944; B-version, 5 August 1943. These include Lena Hartog, the wife of one of the warehouse employees; and Nelly Voskuijl, the sister of one of the Franks helpers. I think he got the information from Ahlers," Lee said. Her political leanings had estranged her so much from her family that she left their house. 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. Johan was important to them because he could keep an eye on the other warehouse workers to see if they noticed anything. "After the play and the book, Otto Frank was kind of like a saint. They had to act as if everything was normal. Terms of Use 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. Many experts believe that someone alerted Nazi authorities to the hiding place of Frank and her family, but the culprit has never been determined. 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. 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. 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. A long-held theory proposed that a new employee at her fathers business, Willem van Maaren, tipped off the Nazis. After the war, Otto Frank, the only member of his family who survived the Holocaust, made statements indicating he knew who his betrayer was. Despite two investigations into his . "Van den Bergh wasn't deported," said Pieter van Twisk, a veteran Dutch journalist who co-founded the investigative project and led the research team. Her work has appeared in a number of publications, including NYmag.com, Flavorwire and Tina Brown Media's Women in the World. 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. Who betrayed the Franks and why? According to Pankoke, for Van den Bergh to have that level of protection, he must have had some leverage with the Nazis. [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. 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 video above was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and Will Croxton. Anne was especially sorry about the latter, because it would be difficult to replace that many coupons. Anne chronicled their lives in the Annex in her diary for the next two years, making her final entry on August 1, 1944. 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. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. So now we have a request. Who betrayed the Franks and why? - Sage-Advices As a member of the local Jewish Counciladministrative bodies established by the Nazis to govern Jewish communities in German-occupied Europevan den Bergh had access to lists of addresses where Jews were known to be in hiding. The second major burglary in the night of 9 to 10 April 1944 was much more serious. "Sometimes you can go through the same material with fresh eyes. The time will come when we will be people again and not just Jews! Out of the seven others who hid with her, her father, Otto Frank, was the only one who survived the Holocaust. Co-authored by Belgian journalist Jeroen De Bruyn, Van Wijks book is called, Anne Frank: The Untold Story, with the subtitle, The hidden truth about Elli Vossen, the youngest helper of the Secret Annex. (As 15-year old Anne refined her diary with an eye toward eventual publication, Elli Vossen was the pseudonym she gave to Bep.). "He may have got money for it. That was a major setback, because Van Maaren was curious, and he noticed that people had been in the building after closing time. 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. There are no indications that Willem, or the other warehouse workers, knew that there were people in hiding in the building. 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. 'My aunt might have betrayed Anne Frank,' writes son of Secret Annex Still, Ronald Leopold, executive director of the museum, notesthat the new investigation did not refute the possibility that the people in hiding were betrayed, but instead illustrated that other scenarios should also be considered.. A detailed picture of the interior of the warehouse, reconstruction (1999). Erik Somers, a historian at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, praised the depth of the investigation but criticized its conclusion. Then, in 2016, a team of investigators, led by a veteran FBI agent, decided to bring modern. 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. ), Anne Frank HouseWestermarkt 201016 DK Amsterdam. Who betrayed Anne Frank? Canadian author details surprising findings of On a warm summer day in 1944, four German and Dutch security police pulled up to the warehouse at 263 Prinsengracht and asked the employee, Willem Van Maaren, where the Jews were hiding. display: block; Thats obvious, said Bertus Hulsman, who was the wartime boyfriend of Voskuijl and sometimes mentioned in the diary. Meilan Solly 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.
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