Who denounced young Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis in 1944? A book based on the investigation of a former FBI agent names a Jewish notary as the main suspect, who allegedly did so to save his own family.
Notary Arnold van den Bergh may have revealed the whereabouts of the Frank family in Amsterdam, claims the author of a six-year investigation into the unsolved case, the results of which have been published in the book Who betrayed Anne Frank?, by Canadian author Rosemary Sullivan, which is published in French on Tuesday by HarperCollins.
The evidence against Mr van den Bergh has been corroborated by modern techniques as well as an anonymous letter sent to Anne Frank’s father, Otto, after World War II, calling the notary a traitor.
The Anne Frank House said it was “impressed” by the investigation led by retired Federal Bureau of Investigation detective Vince Pankoke, but stressed that further investigation was needed.
The teenager, known throughout the world since the publication of her diary written between 1942 and 1944, while she and her family were hiding in a clandestine apartment in Amsterdam, was arrested in 1944. She died the year next, at the age of 15, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Many theories
Different theories circulated as to what led to the raid that revealed “The Annex”, where the family was hiding.
In 2016, retired FBI detective Vince Pankoke was hired by a Dutch documentary filmmaker to lead a team to solve this unsolved case.
The name of van den Bergh, who died in 1950, had so far received little attention. The notary was a founding member of the Jewish Council, an administrative body that the Nazis used to organize deportations.
According to investigators, his family had an exemption from deportation, which was revoked at the time of the betrayal targeting the Franks, but the deportation ultimately did not take place.
Disappeared from radar
The notary disappeared from radar at the end of the war, which he survived along with the rest of his family.
But the most compelling element was the seriousness with which Otto Frank treated the allegation, Dutch media reported.
Anne’s father told investigators in 1964 that he received a letter shortly after the war naming van den Bergh as the one who betrayed the Franks and several other Jewish families. A copy made by Mr. Frank was found by investigators in the archives of a police officer.
“We don’t have a smoking gun [« smoking gun »], but we have a hot weapon with empty casings next to it,” Pankoke was quoted as saying by Dutch public broadcaster NOS.
Ronald Leopold, managing director of the Anne Frank House, said questions about the anonymous letter remained and a full investigation was needed.
Questions and doubts
“You have to be very careful before putting someone in history like the one who betrayed Anne Frank, if it’s not 100 or 200% sure,” he told AFP. .
Other experts were more critical. “Defamatory nonsense,” Bart van der Boom, a professor at Leiden University, told NOS virulently.
” [Les enquêteurs] say he wasn’t hiding, so he had to buy his security another way. But they just don’t know where he was,” he said.
Mr van den Bergh’s granddaughter, who told the researchers about her family history, was told of their findings last weekend. She declined to comment on the case to the NOS.