This may be the end of nearly eighty years of questioning. After six years of investigation into this unsolved court case, the mystery surrounding the denunciation of Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis may have been solved.
It was Arnold Van den Bergh, a Jewish notary, who betrayed the Frank family to save his, according to Rosemary Sullivan, the Canadian author of a new book titled The Betrayal of Anne Frank (Harpercollins, forthcoming January 19). A documentary on CBS accompanies the publication.
Anne Frank’s family, along with four other people, was discovered in hiding by a Dutch police unit led by an SS off… https://t.co/LnLURK5j0u
The allegations against Mr Van den Bergh, who died in 1950, are supported by evidence there, including an anonymous letter sent to Otto Frank, the family’s sole survivor, after World War II, identifying the notary as a traitor, according to published items in Dutch media Monday January 17.
The Anne-Frank House told Agence France-Presse that the results of the investigation, led by Vincent Pankoke, a retired FBI agent, led to a “fascinating hypothesis” but that they required further research. In 2016, Vincent Pankoke was contacted by Dutch director Thijs Buyens and journalist Pieter van Twisk to participate in an investigation aimed at unraveling the mystery surrounding the denunciation of Anne Frank and her family.
Anne Frank’s family had fled Germany in 1933 for the Netherlands. The 15-year-old girl, 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 on August 4, 1944. Deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp, she died between February and March 1945, after being transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Use of artificial intelligence
Different theories have long circulated about the raid which revealed the secret annex where the family was hiding. Van den Bergh’s name had so far received little attention, but came to light during the investigation, which used modern techniques, including artificial intelligence, to analyze a massive volume of data.
The investigation narrowed the list of suspects to four, including Mr. Van den Bergh, a founding member of the Jewish Council, an administrative body created by Jews, under Nazi coercion, to organize deportations.
The investigators discovered that the family of the notary benefited from an exemption from deportation. This had been revoked at the time of the Franks’ betrayal, but the deportation of the Van den Bergh family had ultimately not taken place, for reasons that remain unknown.
Ronald Leopold, executive director of the Anne Frank House, warned that questions remained about the anonymous letter and that further investigation was needed. “You have to be very careful about writing someone down in history as the one who betrayed Anne Frank if you’re not 100 or 200% sure about that”, he told AFP.