Instead, he was drawn into solving a famous cold case: the question of who betrayed Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis, leading to the Franks' arrest and deportation to a concentration camp. And the people in hiding had to be very careful as well. Ars may earn compensation on sales from links on this site. Wilhelm van Maaren One of the people who has. 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. As fast as they could, they all fled back to the hiding place. "Otto Frank was of no more use to him in that sense, so he betrayed them," Lee said in the television interview. Click the link in that email to complete your registration. Instead, the groups arrest could have been a tragic accident. 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. January 16, 2022 / 8:09 PM That was quite a feat. Although Miep Gies is the best-remembered of the Dutch helpers, Voskuijl was the closest to Anne in age and temperament. 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). Thats obvious, said Bertus Hulsman, who was the wartime boyfriend of Voskuijl and sometimes mentioned in the diary. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. In order to protect his own family, van den Bergh may have handed over lists of addresses where fellow Jews were hiding to the Nazis. Hermann van Pels hit the ground with an axe, which finally drove them away. Anne Frank HouseWestermarkt 201016 DK Amsterdam, Ronald Leopold, Executive Director of the Anne Frank House. Van Maaren fought the accusations and rejected a settlement. 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. Willem van Maaren was one of the warehouse staff. 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. 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. 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. Immediately after the war, Willem van Maaren was the only suspect in the investigation into the raid of the Secret Annex by the Sicherheitsdienst. 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. Willem van Maaren was the traitor. In 1963, the SS officer who conducted the annex raid told investigators a young woman made the betrayal call. The enduring mystery of the Anne Frank story is, who betrayed her to the Nazis? 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. Lee "has no proof, but I can imagine this was the case. There's no evidence to indicate that he knew who was hiding at any of these addresses, Pankoke tells 60 Minutes. [But] when van den Bergh lost all his series of protections exempting him from having to go to the camps, he had to provide something valuable to the Nazis that he's had contact with to let him and his wife at that time stay safe.. Brigit Katz All rights reserved. But, the Anne Frank House museum and research center were unable to confirm Van Dijk's involvement after its own investigation. When they came to raid the building, they unexpectedly discovered Anne and the others. The case. 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. Despite two investigations into his . 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. Pankoke and his team eliminated her as a suspect for a few reasons. Ahlers was among the suspects Pankoke and his team investigated and ultimately ruled out. Explanations for the discovery are mainly based on testimonies, because no documents about the raid on the Secret Annex have been preserved. 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. Was the betrayer antisemitic? Only when he began research for the book in 2010 was the long-time marketing professional able to locate documents that contradict the family backstory on Nelly. 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. You have reached your limit of free articles. Investigating who betrayed Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis The second major burglary in the night of 9 to 10 April 1944 was much more serious. According to Gerald Kremer's The Backyard of the Secret Annex, the Guardian reports, the Franks were betrayed by Anna "Ans" van Dijk, a Jewish woman executed in 1948 for her collaboration in. 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. Throughout the course of the hiding, Bep and Kugler had fallen in love, as Bep later confessed to her sister Diny with red cheeks, wrote Van Wijk. Jennifer Ouellette 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. "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. Nelly didnt just engage in an adolescent relationship with a soldier it went far beyond that, wrote Van Wijk. Two other plausible suspects emerged over the years: Lena van Bladeren-Hartog (died 1963) and Tonny Ahlers (1917 - 2000). (modern). Anne died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen in the spring of 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated. Millions of people have read The Diary of Anne Frank since it was first published posthumously in 1947. This deterioration took place around the period in which a call was made to Gestapo headquarters by a young woman it was later claimed to inform on the Frank familys hiding place. Sign me up , CNMN Collection That was a major setback, because Van Maaren was curious, and he noticed that people had been in the building after closing time. 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. Anne wrote about it in her diary and attributed negative qualifications to him. A 2015 biography of Bep Voskuijl (co-authored by her son Joop) suggested that one of Bep's sisters, Nelly, may have snitched on the Franks. The burglars managed to take two cash boxes containing forty guilders, blank giro and bank cheques, and coupons for 150 kilograms of sugar. Three days after Frank wrote these wordsthe final entry in her beloved diarySS officers raided her Amsterdam hiding place and arrested its eight inhabitants. On Aug. 4, 1944, they went to investigate 263 Prinsengrachtthe same building where Anne and her family were hidingafter receiving tips of fraudulent food-ration cards and illegal employment happening there. I think that nobody can judge van den Bergh who has not been in his position, Sullivan tells the Globe and Mail. Thats why we started the Times of Israel eleven years ago - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world. "Everyone, including his own family, condemned him as distinctly anti-Jewish and a thoroughly unpleasant character.". Did willem van maaren betray the franks? - delasd.vhfdental.com Johan was important to them because he could keep an eye on the other warehouse workers to see if they noticed anything. 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. How did Fritz Pfeffer know the Franks? - Atheists for human rights 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. Michael J. In 1963, the SS officer. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our, Digital On this page we distinguish the facts from the unproven theories and the absolute falsehoods. They will also scrutinise the letters of Anne's father, Otto, for clues and examine police transcripts of interviews dating back to the 1940s. However, Pankoke told 60 Minutes he trusts the evidence shows those hiding in the annex were betrayed and that the Nazi discovery and arrest wasn't merely a coincidence. 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. Terrified, the people in hiding kept very quiet. Vince Pankoke, who tracked Colombian drug traffickers in recentyears atthe FBI, will lead a multidisciplinary team of experts, among them historians, psychological profilers and police detectives. But then we'll want to be. ", 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. Willy Lages, head of the Amsterdam Sicherheitsdienst. In Anne's diary it becomes clear that the Annex occupants also did not trust him. However, the investigation did not prove his guilt. According to the author, he has mostly been met by cold shoulders. 2002 The Associated Press. However, because Anne wrote about Nellys collaboration with the Nazis in the original version of her her diary, the authors proved that Nelly returned to Amsterdam in 1943. Was Anne Frank's family betrayed? After 72 years, historians have a new All rights reserved. "We are interested, that's for sure," said David Barnouw, a researcher and spokesman of the government-financed historical institute. For decades suspicion centred on a man called Willem Van Maaren, who worked in the warehouse attached to the Franks' hiding place. Otto, for his part, never publicly named van den Bergh, who died in 1950, as the informant. Left unsigned, the message named van den Bergh as the person whod reported the Franks hiding place to the Nazis. We had all stopped breathing audibly by then, 8 hearts were pounding, footsteps on our stairs, then a rattling on the bookcase door.' But isn't it even riskier to leave things as they are?. 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. Certainly, Maarten Kuiper received money for the betrayals he made.". Former FBI special agent Vincent Pankoke was looking forward to a relaxing retirement hanging out at the beach when he left the agency. This went well until Johan fell ill in 1943 and was replaced by Willem van Maaren. Experts have discovered, for instance, the identity of a person who betrayed at least one other family to the Nazis. 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. Fox on Parkinson's, and maintaining optimism, Bruce Springsteen on "Nebraska," and the emergence of Springsteen the poet, Michael J. "However, after Otto Frank went into hiding, Tonny Ahlers was out doing other things in different parts of the city. 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. After Lee's book was published, Ahlers' son was quoted as saying he was convinced her theory is true. One day during his youth, Van Wijk heard his mother sobbing in the bathroom. Out of the seven others who hid with her, her father, Otto Frank, was the only one who survived the Holocaust. 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. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. Summer of 1933. . The book by Carol Ann Lee, a British author living in Amsterdam, says the likely informant was a former business associate of Otto Frank, Anne's father. But two police investigations - one immediately after the war and another in the 1960s - turned up nothing and Van Maaren died in 1971 professing his innocence. Among other investigative strategies, they used artificial intelligence to sift through reams of data and original documents. We are saved, go on saving us!That is all we can say. (Anne Frank, 11 April 1944. Now, reports Jon Wertheim for CBS News 60 Minutes, a six-year investigation spearheaded by retired FBI agent Vince Pankoke has pinpointed the likely informant: Arnold van den Bergh, a Jewish notary who may have revealed the Franks hiding place to the Nazis to protect his own family from deportation. He was the warehouse manager as well as the father of Bep, who worked in the office and was one of the helpers. However, the investigation did not prove his guilt. That same week, the Franks were arrestedwhile Van Dijk was away in the Hague. 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. Retired FBI agent has new theory about who betrayed Anne Frank's family Born in 1949, Van Wijk remembers a childhood shrouded in mystery about what Nelly did during the war. Van Maaren fought the accusations and rejected a settlement. "Number one, that during the time period of the betrayal, she wasn't in town," Pankoke explained. Your Privacy Rights 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. 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. The evidence that led Pankoke's investigators to their conclusion pointed to the alleged betrayer as much as it ruled out other suspects including some who had previously been the subject of speculation. "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. 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. For decades, historians have debated who betrayed Anne Frank and her family. 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. Voskuijls father, Johan, was also in on the secret of the Jews in hiding. Barnouw, the historian, said the blackmail supposition is thin. A New Study Suggests Nobody Did. Fox on Parkinson's: "Every day it gets tougher". Fox on Parkinson's, and maintaining optimism - Jan 22, 2022 10:54 pm UTC. He strongly suspected a warehouse employee named Willem van Maaren, who had sparked concerns among the Franks and the people who helped them hide. 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. [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. Most were gassed with brutal assembly-line efficiency. In her diary, Anne Frank wrote about Nelly on several occasions. Did Willem van Maaren betray the Franks? 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. It is believed, however, that documents pertaining to Anne Frank and other residents of the annex were destroyed in a 1940s bombing. See: Barnouw, David & Stroom, Gerrold van der, Who betrayed Anne Frank? Preview: Michael J. 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. Did Willem van Maaren betray Anne Frank? Their mother, Edith, had died of starvation the year before. The proof is not final. Who betrayed Anne Frank? Artificial intelligence could finally solve The warehouse workers were not to know that there were people hiding in the Secret Annex. Magazines, Or create a free account to access more articles, Who Betrayed Anne Frank? "There was a lot of information that pointed to Tonny Ahlers as being a potential suspect," Pankoke said. "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. Sign in to stop seeing this, Netanyahu calls for national unity at Independence Day ceremony, Five wounded in terror car-ramming near busy Jerusalem market, Godfather meets Shtisel: New Netflix thriller delves into Haredi diamond dealers, 15,000 attend controversial joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day event. It was very dangerous for the people in hiding, because what could they do if they were discovered? The people in hiding did not sleep a wink for the rest of the night. During his research for the book, Van Wijk learned that Nelly did far more than engage in flirtations with German soldiers. 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. Footsteps on the stairways, people shaking the bookcase. She added that the people who were helping to hide the Frank family had been looking into the question of how to get this fellow out of the place from every possible angle. Specifically, the author believes Nelly was involved in the betrayal of the so-called Secret Annex Jews, including the iconic teenage diarist. 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. The helpers worked in the office above the warehouse. "We can never be just Dutch, or just English, or whatever, we will always be Jews as well. But despite suspicions, there was no conclusive evidence van Maaren betrayed the family. Terms of Use 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. 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. And probably wasn't capable of betrayal, because had he betrayed the annex, he knew that he would end up losing his job.". "But whenever you actually dig into all the evidence, you find out that he wasn't antisemitic. Join the Ars Orbital Transmission mailing list to get weekly updates delivered to your inbox. A 20-person team for theAnne Frank House was led, in part, by two retired FBI officials; former special agent Vince Pankoke, and behavioral scientist Roger Depue. Still, experts remain focused on the fate of the teenage diarist whose life was cut tragically short. #inline-recirc-item--id-a4ef05fe-8c88-11e2-b06b-024c619f5c3d, #right-rail-recirc-item--id-a4ef05fe-8c88-11e2-b06b-024c619f5c3d { 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. After spending two years eluding Nazi capture while in hiding in Amsterdam, the Frank family was discovered on. There were two separate official investigations into who may have betrayed the family: one in 1947-1948 and the second (conducted by the Dutch police) in 1963-1964. According to Pankoke, for Van den Bergh to have that level of protection, he must have had some leverage with the Nazis. The helpers and people in hiding did not trust him. According to Pankoke, Van Dijk had betrayed the family of Otto Frank's second wife. .component--type-recirculation .item:nth-child(5) { Who betrayed the Anne Frank family? Here's what we know now "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. Her work has appeared in a number of publications, including NYmag.com, Flavorwire and Tina Brown Media's Women in the World.