Anne Frank’s diary is one of the most important testimonies of the Nazi dictatorship. Investigators have now published new findings on the betrayal of the Frank family.
Amsterdam – The Frank family’s hiding place in a rear building on Amsterdam’s Prinsengracht is now a museum. There the young Anne Frank wrote one of the most important testimonies of the Nazi dictatorship. According to new investigations, the Frank family was most likely betrayed to the National Socialists by a Jewish notary. This result of an investigation team was presented in Dutch media on Monday (01/17/2022).
The notary Arnold van den Bergh had given the German occupiers a list of where Jews were hiding in Amsterdam in order to save the life of his own family. An international team of investigators had investigated the case for five years using the latest techniques.
Reveal the hiding place – the Frank family is deported to a concentration camp and murdered
A copy of an anonymous letter that Anne’s father, Otto Frank, received in 1946 is the main evidence. The name of the notary is already mentioned therein. Although the original of the letter has disappeared, a copy was found in the Amsterdam City Archives. According to the investigators, the trail had never been examined in detail before.
Together with four other people, the Jewish Frank family went into hiding in a rear building in Amsterdam from 1642 to 1944. There Anne (1929 – 1945) wrote her world-famous diary. The hiding place was revealed in August 1944. The family was deported to concentration camps and murdered. Only father Otto survived.
FBI investigator: “Our theory has (…) a probability of more than 85 percent”
As a member of the Jewish Council, the notary was initially protected from deportation and had many contacts. However, when this protection fell away in 1944, in his desperation he is said to have revealed the hiding places in order to save his wife, his three daughters and himself.
77 years after the end of the war, there can be no absolute certainty, said former FBI investigator Vince Pankoke, who was instrumental in the investigation. “But our theory has a probability of more than 85 percent,” he said on the radio. (lz/dpa)
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