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. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine But despite suspicions, there was no conclusive evidence van Maaren betrayed the family. When did the Franks decided to move to the Netherlands due to increasing tensions in Germany? Specifically, Anne referred to the troubles brought upon the Voskuijl family by Nelly, and that the young woman was often away from home.. 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. As he tells Anthony Deutsch and Stephanie van den Berg of Reuters, van den Bergh was a very influential man who couldve avoided deportation for any number of reasons. The encounter ended with Nelly shouting, Just go to your Jews!. Her writing created a trail to judicial documents from other parts of the Netherlands, resulting in the latest theory. Fox on Parkinson's: "Every day it gets tougher" Pankoke also showed Wertheim a note, which investigators say Otto Frank received after the war, that specifically names Van den Bergh as the betrayer. Meilan Solly Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany, but she and her family fled the country and settled in Amsterdam after Adolf Hitler came to power. Those hiding in the annex were wary of Van Maaren, and Anne Frank documented their suspicion in her diary. Do you rely on The Times of Israel for accurate and insightful news on Israel and the Jewish world? Join the Ars Orbital Transmission mailing list to get weekly updates delivered to your inbox. 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. Another book posited that the suspect might be a Jewish woman. The case was reopened in 1963 after Austrian Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal located Silberbauer in the Vienna police force. 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. Her political leanings had estranged her so much from her family that she left their house. Your California Privacy Rights | Do Not Sell My Personal Information In several investigations after the war, Van Maaren was the prime suspect for the betrayal of Anne Frank; however Van Maaren publicly denied he was responsible. "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. 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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. 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. Incorrect password. One year before his death in 1980, Frank told an interviewer he believed a woman made the call to the Gestapo. Recently translated into English, Van Wijks family account adds what he calls a remarkable name to the list of people suspected of betraying the Secret Annex nearly 75 years ago: his mothers sister. 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. Your Privacy Rights Brigit Katz is a freelance writer based in Toronto. Around the time of Nellys return, her relations with the family strongly deteriorated, wrote Van Wijk, including Johan Voskuijl physically beating his daughter. The case. Willem Gerardus van Maaren (August 10, 1895- November 28, 1971) was the person most often suggested as the betrayer of Anne Frank. 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. Kugler and Kleiman were also arrested and held at a penal camp for "enemies of the regime.". More than 100,000 Dutch Jews - 70 percent of the community - were deported to concentration camps in Germany. So the team has enlisted the Amsterdam-based data company Xomnia to develop algorithms that will analyze the documents, andperhapsreveal connections that have never been noticed before. January 16, 2022 / 8:09 PM Within several years the book had been translated into German, French and English, and was made into a film in 1959. The second theory, put forward by Austrian writer Melissa Mller, has a cleaning lady in the warehouse, Lena Hartog, as the traitor. Among other activities, the Frank sisters took correspondence courses in Voskuijls name, and the administrative assistant put aside filing for the sisters to do at night. Willem van Maaren was the traitor. This is highly significant and even if they don't find who the traitor was, the scope to find out exactly what did happen is enormous.". There was another important reason Pankoke crossed Van Dijk off the list of suspects. (modern). Per BBC, he wasn't deported and had lost his Jewish identity during the war. Anne Frank is a symbol of the youth and what the people who were in hiding went through, Pankoke said. Michael J. In the middle of war, Nelly moved to Austria with a Nazi officer, only to have the relationship fall apart. This should be part of her biography.. Only the father, Otto Frank, survived. 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. Anne, who is famous for documenting her time in the Secret Annex in her renowned diary, died of typhus in the spring of 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. "There's no smoking gun, and the theory has too many loose ends," he said. 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. 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. Not only was she carousing with German soldiers, but Nellys rowdy behavior earned her a stint in police custody. Please try again or choose an option below. Read our affiliate link policy. They also believe their work in solving this decades-old cold case resonates today. . 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. It was only accessible via a door on the landing, kept hidden by a bookcase. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday. However, the investigation did not prove his guilt. Despite two investigations into his . 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. A New Study Suggests Nobody Did. Hermann van Pels hit the ground with an axe, which finally drove them away. ", Photo of Ans van Dijk courtesy of Ben van Meerendonk/IISH. (11 April 1944.) Pankoke and his team also spent hours looking for clues in the concealed rooms behind an Amsterdam warehouse, where the Frank family and four other Jews lived hidden away for more than two years. For decades suspicion centred on a man called Willem Van Maaren, who worked in the warehouse attached to the Franks' hiding place. Among Voskuijls other secrets that her son came to know, the clandestine affection shared by his mother and Victor Kugler, one of the other Secret Annex helpers, fills a page of the book. The time will come when we will be people again and not just Jews! Lena had already lost her son in the war, the theory goes, and her husband worked for Otto's food preservatives firm. A long-held theory proposed that a new employee at her father's business, Willem van Maaren, tipped off the Nazis. Left unsigned, the message named van den Bergh as the person who'd reported the Franks' hiding place to the Nazis. One of the reasons his aunt has been overlooked by past investigators, believes Van Wijk, involves his familys darkest secret. If Frank had known that Van Dijk had also betrayed his family, Pankoke reasoned, he would have had no incentive to keep the information quiet. 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.. But all ofthe other people who were in hiding, and their collaborators, theyre just as important; theyre just not as famous.. Many experts believe that someone alerted Nazi authorities to the hiding place, but the identity of the culprit has never been conclusively determined. In 1963, the SS officer who conducted the annex raid told investigators a young woman made the betrayal call. There was one sister, however, who took a different path, Van Wijk was told growing up. 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. 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. Willem van Maaren was the traitor. 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. 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. Magazines, Digital In 1963, the SS officer. In 2022, The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation which details the findings of Pankoke's investigationcited Arnold van den Bergh, a Jewish businessman and member of the. In 1947, Otto Frank and the helpers filed a complaint against him with the political police on suspicion of betrayal. In a 2002 biography of Anne Frank's father, Otto, author Carol Ann Lee suggested the betrayer might be Tonny Ahlers, a Dutch National Socialist. But the evidence against Van Maaren was again inconclusive, and he died in 1971 professing his innocence. For decades, historians have debated who betrayed Anne Frank and her family. For as little as $6/month, you will: Were really pleased that youve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month. 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 material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Barnouw, the historian, said the blackmail supposition is thin. As The New York Timesreported, they hoped to bring new technology, including forensic accounting, computer modeling and even crowd sourcing research, to examine existing evidence such as Anne Franks diary and the Amsterdam building where the Franks hid. See: Barnouw, David & Stroom, Gerrold van der, Who betrayed Anne Frank? The Amsterdam home where she and her family hid is today a museum known as the Anne Frank House. 2002 The Associated Press. After tracking down Hulsman for the book, Van Wijk learned of a heated conversation between Nelly and other members of the Voskuijl family during the hiding period. More than three decades after Elisabeth Bep Voskuijls death, her son co-authored a biography of the least-known among the Dutch resisters who hid Anne Frank and other Jews during the Holocaust. The business continued to operate while the Franks were in hiding, although it apparently was no longer trading with the Germans. But, the Anne Frank House museum and research center were unable to confirm Van Dijk's involvement after its own investigation.
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