Bep Voskuijl was only 18 when she started working for the spice and jam company owned by Otto Frank. In 1963, the SS officer. After the war, Frank removed content from Annes diary regarding Nellys collaboration. 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. Wilhelm van Maaren One of the people who has. Did Willem van Maaren betray the Franks? At the warehouse on the ground floor, the officers addressed employee Willem van Maaren. Click the link in that email to complete registration so you can comment. On 17 January 2022 the cold case teampresentedtheir findings. The Anne Frank House has opened its archives to Pankoke and his team, and, according to Boffey of the Guardian, welcomes the new research initiative. }. 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. For as little as $6/month, you will: Were really pleased that youve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month. 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. 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. 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). Who betrayed Anne Frank? A new book tracks history's most - MSN As fast as they could, they all fled back to the hiding place. The initial police investigation occurred in 1947, when Otto and the Helpers' repeated complaints to the political police accusing Van Maaren finally prompted an investigation. Nelly did it with krauts, the authors father slipped at the table from time to time. 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. Tellingly, the books title in Dutch was, Silent No More., The biography is my mission, said Van Wijk, who dedicated the book to Dutch resisters against Nazism. The case was reopened in 1963 after Austrian Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal located Silberbauer in the Vienna police force. (11 April 1944.) He only stuck to the logic of assumptions of which he did not know the validity, nor did he need to know the validity in order to give a reasoned answer. That was quite a feat. Hermann van Pels hit the ground with an axe, which finally drove them away. When they came to raid the building, they unexpectedly discovered Anne and the others. 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. Van Maaren fought the accusations and rejected a settlement. 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. Anne often wrote about good-natured Bep in her diary, including happenings in the large Voskuijl family of eight siblings. When the people in hiding put it back, it was brutally kicked in again. They had come very close to being discovered! Canadian author details surprising findings of cold-case investigation Rosemary Sullivan's new book documents the roughly five-year Dutch investigation into who. 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.. Her work has appeared in a number of publications, including NYmag.com, Flavorwire and Tina Brown Media's Women in the World. 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. My aunt Willy [Nellys sister] was furious until she died in 2015, just before the publication, he said. In the end, the list of people who were accused of being involved in the case is too long to include in its entirety. There are no indications that Willem, or the other warehouse workers, knew that there were people in hiding in the building. [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. "Everyone, including his own family, condemned him as distinctly anti-Jewish and a thoroughly unpleasant character.". "We can never be just Dutch, or just English, or whatever, we will always be Jews as well. "However, after Otto Frank went into hiding, Tonny Ahlers was out doing other things in different parts of the city. Anne Frank's betrayal: Investigating other suspects The trove of information is so large that a human in their lifetime might not be able to review it, Pankoke tells Stephanie van den Berg andAnthony Deutsch of Reuters. . Investigators Are Turning to Big Data to Find Who Betrayed Anne Frank. Did willem van maaren betray the franks? - delasd.vhfdental.com Beginning in 2016, Pankoke led a team of expert investigators equipped with modern crime-solving techniques to try to crack the case. A detailed picture of the interior of the warehouse, reconstruction (1999). ", Ms Lee is also cautious but believes the secret of who shopped Anne Frank is there to be unearthed. The helpers and people in hiding did not trust him. Erik Somers, a historian at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, praised the depth of the investigation but criticized its conclusion. Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window), Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window), Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window), Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window), Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window), The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation, https://www.history.com/news/who-betrayed-anne-frank. One day during his youth, Van Wijk heard his mother sobbing in the bathroom. Privacy Statement If so, please join The Times of Israel Community. It has been translated into around 67 languages and has sold over 31 million copies. 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. Did Willem van Maaren betray Anne Frank? When did the Van Pels (Van . This should be part of her biography.. 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. Ed Sheeran plays guitar in court in bid to show he didn't steal Marvin Gaye song For more than 20 years, employee Van Maaren was the main suspect. WIRED Media Group 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. The people in hiding shared their suspicion, without knowing him or even having seen him. All the more so because betrayal was never established beyond a doubt. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. But all ofthe other people who were in hiding, and their collaborators, theyre just as important; theyre just not as famous.. Meilan Solly is Smithsonian magazine's associate digital editor, history. Fox on Parkinson's, and maintaining optimism, Bruce Springsteen on "Nebraska," and the emergence of Springsteen the poet, Michael J. The proof is not final. 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. Within several years the book had been translated into German, French and English, and was made into a film in 1959. Still, experts remain focused on the fate of the teenage diarist whose life was cut tragically short. Per the New York Times Alexandra Jacobs, the team drew on a combination of big data and artificial intelligence analysis, old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting, interviews, and archival research to narrow down the pool of suspects. 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. Immediately after the war, Willem van Maaren was the only suspect in the investigation into the raid of the Secret Annex by the Sicherheitsdienst. Pankoke's team wondered: Did the suspected betrayer know the location of the secret annex? Searching for Anne Frank's betrayer, 80 years on. 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. "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. That same week, the Franks were arrestedwhile Van Dijk was away in the Hague. Who really turned Anne Frank over to the Nazis? Two other plausible suspects emerged over the years: Lena van Bladeren-Hartog (died 1963) and Tonny Ahlers (1917 - 2000). "We are interested, that's for sure," said David Barnouw, a researcher and spokesman of the government-financed historical institute. They had to act as if everything was normal. Lee says among the four men who raided the Prinsengracht warehouse on Aug. 4, 1944, was Maarten Kuiper, a Dutch policeman who was a friend of Ahlers. We strive for accuracy and fairness. Fox on Parkinson's: "Every day it gets tougher" And then they heard the footsteps leave again. Ahlers himself was jailed for collaboration after the war and bizarrely Otto wrote letters to the authorities pleading for his release. 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. Fox on Parkinson's, and maintaining optimism In her diary, Anne Frank wrote about Nelly on several occasions. God truly protected us ,Anne wrote in her diary, much relieved. They didn't flee quite far enough: the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands began in May 1940 and eventually forced the Franks (and many other Jews) into hiding. Magazines, Digital Investigators began taking a fresh look at the case in 2016, hoping to provide new answers. According to the researchers, the German Sicherheitsdienst police who discovered the family usually investigated cases involving cash and securities, not Jews in hiding. Now, according to Daniel Boffey of the Guardian, a retired FBI agent has launched an investigation into the enduring historical mystery, hoping to find out once and for all who betrayed the young diarist. He found Voskuijl in a desperate state with a mouthful of sleeping pills. She made him keep the episode their secret, he wrote. The people in hiding decided not to wait but to take action. Did they do it for money? Potential informants ruled out by the group ranged from Willem van Maaren, an oft-cited suspect who worked in the warehouse where the Franks were hiding, to Nelly Voskuijl, a Nazi sympathizer and the sister of Secret Annex helper Bep Vokuijl, to Ans van Dijk, a Jewish collaborator whose actions led to the arrest of some 145 people. Ahlers was among the suspects Pankoke and his team investigated and ultimately ruled out. 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. Already a member? 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. Who Betrayed Anne Frank? Part One : r/UnresolvedMysteries - Reddit Those hiding in the annex were wary of Van Maaren, and Anne Frank documented their suspicion in her diary. Was the betrayer antisemitic? Even during the early days of the war, the Voskuijl family faced trouble with Nelly. 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. The research is based on Franks diary entries from March 1944entries that researchers say have not been used as a source until now. Hours earlier, Karl Josef Silberbauer, the Austrian commander of the squad, received a phone call from the head of the Amsterdam security police who said eight Jews were hiding in the warehouse. warehouse employee named Willem van Maaren, who had sparked concerns among the Franks and the people who helped them hide . #inline-recirc-item--id-a4ef05fe-8c88-11e2-b06b-024c619f5c3d ~ .item:nth-child(5) { The researchers also investigated the theory, first raised by scholars at the Anne Frank House in 2016, that the SS discovered the hiding place by chance while searching the warehouse for evidence of illegal work and ration coupon fraud. As the whole world now knows, 15-year-old Anne Frank died (likely of typhoid fever) a day after her older sister, Margot, at the Bergen-Belsen death camp between February and April 1945. Additionally, believes Van Wijk, Otto Frank either suspected or knew of Nelly Voskuijls role in 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. It made sense that two people who were constantly in each others vicinity and shared the role of helper of Jews, grew closer, he wrote. Though the Nazis dissolved the council in September 1943, sending most of its members to concentration and death camps, van den Bergh and his family managed to escape deportationan exemption indicating that the notary had some kind of leverage, according to Pankoke. Two Dutch investigations, in 1947-48 and 1963-64, targeted the warehouse manager, Willem van Maaren, but were inconclusive. 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. | READ MORE. They will also scrutinise the letters of Anne's father, Otto, for clues and examine police transcripts of interviews dating back to the 1940s. Despite two investigations into his . I think that nobody can judge van den Bergh who has not been in his position, Sullivan tells the Globe and Mail. But Dutch government historians disclosed yesterday that two new theories about who betrayed 15-year-old Jewish schoolgirl Anne Frank to the Nazis in occupied Amsterdam are so compelling that they are reopening their investigations. 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. In 1947, Otto Frank and the helpers filed a complaint against him with the political police on suspicion of betrayal. Nelly fell in love with a young Austrian Nazi and had worked for a year on a German air base. A petty thief and unsavory braggart, Van Maaren was investigated shortly after the war, but nothing was proved. How were the people in hiding discovered? For decades suspicion centred on a man called Willem Van Maaren, who worked in the warehouse attached to the Franks' hiding place. 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. [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. They were successful, and the burglars ran off. Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter, Despite decades of research, betrayal as a point of departure has delivered nothing conclusive, Ronald Leopold, Executive Director of the Anne Frank House museum, said in statement. 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. Out of the seven others who hid with her, her father, Otto Frank, was the only one who survived the Holocaust. You must not mark someone down in history as the betrayer of Anne Frank if you dont have conclusive evidence for this., the Anne Frank House in 2016 reinvestigated the raid, People in hiding in the occupied Netherlands. Two other plausible suspects emerged over the years: Lena van Bladeren-Hartog (died 1963) and Tonny Ahlers (1917 - 2000). "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. "He may have got money for it. 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. "After the play and the book, Otto Frank was kind of like a saint. They could, for example, not flush the toilet too often, because the water discharge from the Secret Annex ran along the storeroom. The sound might arouse suspicion. Historians have proposed competing hypotheses without definitive proof . 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. In this book, he's much more flesh and blood. For decades, historians have debated who betrayed Anne Frank and her family. Around the time of Nellys return, her relations with the family strongly deteriorated, wrote Van Wijk, including Johan Voskuijl physically beating his daughter. Ahlers said he believed his father received money from Frank, because the flow of funds stopped when Frank died in 1980. Willem van Maaren was the traitor. We dont have 100 percent certainty. "They were friends. Pankoke and his team eliminated her as a suspect for a few reasons. ", 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. Van Maaren was suspicious and would set "traps" to . 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. According to the author, he has mostly been met by cold shoulders. In Van Wijks assessment, there is no doubt Nelly knew about the Jews in hiding. Pankoke also showed Wertheim a note, which investigators say Otto Frank received after the war, that specifically names Van den Bergh as the betrayer. War diary of life in hiding became world bestseller The Diary of Anne Frank, first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl, is one of the most widely read books in the world. Kugler was a married man, and he never shared the secret of the hidden Jews with his wife, wrote Van Wijk. 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. Fifteen-year-old Anne, her sister Margot and her mother Edith died in Nazi concentration camps. A new book suggests the informant may have been a business associate of Anne's father, the only family member to survive World War II. Advertising Notice Born in 1949, Van Wijk remembers a childhood shrouded in mystery about what Nelly did during the war. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community. Kugler and Kleiman were also arrested and held at a penal camp for "enemies of the regime.". Michael J. The team hopes to reveal the results of its investigation on August 4, 2019the 75th anniversary of Anne Franks arrest. The Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, the researchers who published the authoritative version the diary and the caretaker of the Frank papers, said Ahlers had not been a suspect until Lee started probing his background for her book, "The Hidden Life of Otto Frank," published in March. 2023 Cond Nast. "I think that people that are looking at this feel, 'Ah, maybe we can learn something if this case is solved,'" Pankoke said. You have reached your limit of free articles. The Pankoke team's story was featured in a segment on 60 Minutes earlier this week (see the video at end of this post) and is covered in detail in a new book by Rosemary Sullivan: The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation. | READ MORE. Your Privacy Rights Speaking with Marsha Lederman of the Globe and Mail, Sullivan says the researchers characterize the notary as a tragic figure, not as some kind of villain. Bayens tells the AP that [w]e went looking for a perpetrator and we found a victim., Van den Bergh gave that list as a way of keeping him and his family out of the extermination camps, Sullivan says. For decades, historians have debated who betrayed Anne Frank and her family. A New Study Suggests Nobody Did. Nevertheless, Lee's book "is interesting because it takes a more balanced view of Otto Frank," Barnouw said. . This is not the first time that hopes of unlocking the mystery have been raised. Although he published his mothers most intimate secrets, Van Wijk believes his book would eventually have gained her approval, because she greatly upheld the truth, he said. And if what we could do would be to offer anonymous addresses, I dont know that I know many people who could resist it.. Her writing created a trail to judicial documents from other parts of the Netherlands, resulting in the latest theory. The burglars managed to take two cash boxes containing forty guilders, blank giro and bank cheques, and coupons for 150 kilograms of sugar. Downstairs they think it is too risky. My sister and my oldest brother are still angry with me about the content of the book, Van Wijk told The Times of Israel. 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. 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. One year before his death in 1980, Frank told an interviewer he believed a woman made the call to the Gestapo. Although the team's evidence points to Van den Bergh as the prime suspect, they concede this is a circumstantial case. Left unsigned, the message named van den Bergh as the person whod reported the Franks hiding place to the Nazis. After spending two years eluding Nazi capture while in hiding in Amsterdam, the Frank family was discovered on. That was a major setback, because Van Maaren was curious, and he noticed that people had been in the building after closing time. The case against Ahlers fell apart, Pankoke told Wertheim, when it came to knowledge. Maarten Kuiper was one of the major betrayers of Jews in hiding during that time.". That evening, Peter heard sounds from the warehouse. All Rights Reserved. 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. Nelly knew that Bep and her father were helping Jews. "She was out of town working not close to Amsterdam. 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). 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. 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. Van Maaren fought the accusations and rejected a settlement. Kremer's father was an acquaintance ofVan Dijk in Amsterdam and Kremer writes that in early August 1944, his father overheardVan Dijkspeaking about Prinsengracht, where the Franks were hiding, in Nazi offices. 2022 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. Who Betrayed Anne Frank? A New Study Suggests Nobody Did - Yahoo News In that statement we indicated the need for further research. In the years following Nelly Voskuijls death in 2001, Van Wijk attempted to learn more about the relationship between his mother and his aunt from members of the large family. Who Betrayed Anne Frank? A New Study Suggests Nobody Did Click the link in that email to complete your registration. Former FBI special agent Vincent Pankoke was looking forward to a relaxing retirement hanging out at the beach when he left the agency.
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