why did willem van maaren betray the franksguinea pig rescue salem oregon
But two police investigations - one immediately after the war and another in the 1960s - turned up nothing and Van Maaren died in 1971 professing his innocence. She was 15 at the time of her death. 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. believe the most likely culprit is a local Jewish leader named Arnold van den Bergh. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. For decades suspicion centred on a man called Willem Van Maaren, who worked in the warehouse attached to the Franks' hiding place. Among those captured was Anne Frank, a 15-year-old schoolgirl who had spent over two years living in the cramped safehouse with her parents and older sister. 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 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. Fox on Parkinson's and how he finds "optimism is sustainable" The involvement of Van Dijk, who was executed in 1948 after admitting to collaborating in the capture of 145 people, had been previously claimed. In 2002, author Carol Ann Lee argued the informant was Tonny Ahlers, a Dutch Nazi sympathizer who had previously been a business associate of Otto Frank. The Subdistrict Court dismissed the . According to the researchers, the German Sicherheitsdienst police who discovered the family usually investigated cases involving cash and securities, not Jews in hiding. Her writing created a trail to judicial documents from other parts of the Netherlands, resulting in the latest theory. Years later, after Anne Frank became famous for her diary, readers wondered what had gone wrong. For decades suspicion centred on a man called Willem Van Maaren, who worked in the warehouse attached to the Franks' hiding place. His aunts past as a Nazi collaborator, as well as her whereabouts during a key part of the hiding period, had been covered up by the family. As a member of the local Jewish Counciladministrative bodies established by the Nazis to govern Jewish communities in German-occupied Europevan den Bergh had access to lists of addresses where Jews were known to be in hiding. 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. If so, please join The Times of Israel Community. And if what we could do would be to offer anonymous addresses, I dont know that I know many people who could resist it.. 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. Voskuijls father, Johan, was also in on the secret of the Jews in hiding. Despite two investigations into his . The new investigation does not refute the possibility that the people in hiding were betrayed, but illustrates that other scenarios should also be considered.. Apparently, the police were called next, because a little while later, they came inside to take a look around. In Anne's diary it becomes clear that the Annex occupants also did not trust him. On a warm summer day in 1944, four German and Dutch security police pulled up to the warehouse at 263 Prinsengracht and asked the employee, Willem Van Maaren, where the Jews were hiding. In a 2018 book,The Backyard of the Secret Annex,Gerard Kremer, the son of a member of the Dutch resistance of the same name, argues that a Jewish woman,Ans van Dijk, was responsible for the Franks' capture. First, fingers were pointed at Willem van Maaren, who worked in a warehouse below where the Jews were hidden by coworkers of Otto Frank, Anne's father. In analyzing the person who might have tipped off police to the location, the investigators adapted a standard law enforcement axiom in assessing suspects and looked for "knowledge, motive, opportunity." On July 6, the Frank family began their lives in the Secret Annex attached to the office building at Prinsengracht263,where Otto Frank had worked. The Germans were paying a bounty of 40 guilders per head, which was "a large amount in those days," she said. This week on 60 Minutes, correspondent Jon Wertheim reported on a new look into the decades-old question that has dogged many readers of Anne Frank's diary: Who betrayed the Frank family and led a search team to their secret annex hidden behind a bookcase? 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. Among other theories the Anne Frank House investigated was a 2016reportthat suggests no one was, in fact, responsible for leaking to the Nazis. Beginning in 2016, Pankoke led a team of expert investigators equipped with modern crime-solving techniques to try to crack the case. Writer Rosemary Sullivan chronicled the painstaking process in a new book, The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation. It was an anonymous phone call in the hot summer of 1944 which led the Gestapo and Dutch security police to the concealed annexe in a canalside house where Anne Frank and her family had hidden for almost two years. Investigators began taking a fresh look at the case in 2016, hoping to provide new answers. Willem van Maaren was the traitor. "Sometimes you can go through the same material with fresh eyes. The enduring mystery of the Anne Frank story is, who betrayed her to the Nazis? Photo collection: Anne Frank Stichting, Amsterdam / photographer: Allard Bovenberg, All 8 of us were just pleased that we had slept so well that night and not heard a thing., We had all stopped breathing audibly by then., Reconstruction: the arrest of the people in hiding. For instance, the Anne Frank House in 2016 reinvestigated the raid, and in 2017 a former FBI officer announced that he would be looking for the possible traitor of the people in hiding with the help of an international cold case team and new technology. Historians made no further headway. Terrified, the people in hiding kept very quiet. Anne Frank HouseWestermarkt 201016 DK Amsterdam, Ronald Leopold, Executive Director of the Anne Frank House. Cookie Policy That was a major setback, because Van Maaren was curious, and he noticed that people had been in the building after closing time. "He was a Dutch Nazi, a well-known traitor and an anti-semite and was very anti-Jewish. The people in hiding in the Secret Annex were terrified when someone broke into the business premises. Clearly, the museums report concludes, the last word about that fateful summer day in 1944 has not yet been said.. But then we'll want to be. 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. Now, reports Jon Wertheim for CBS News 60 Minutes, a six-year investigation spearheaded by retired FBI agent Vince Pankoke has pinpointed the likely informant: Arnold van den Bergh, a Jewish notary who may have revealed the Franks hiding place to the Nazis to protect his own family from deportation. display: block; It probably never will be. In the years since Anne Franks diary was published, investigators and historians have proposed several other potential informants. The Subdistrict Court dismissed the . 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. 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. In June 1947 1,500 copies of the Dutch edition of the diary were produced. ), Anne Frank HouseWestermarkt 201016 DK Amsterdam. They will also scrutinise the letters of Anne's father, Otto, for clues and examine police transcripts of interviews dating back to the 1940s. Who betrayed Anne Frank? 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. Lee said Ahlers probably decided to tip off the authorities after his own company slid into bankruptcy and he no longer needed to do business with Frank's company. Among other investigative strategies, they used artificial intelligence to sift through reams of data and original documents. | READ MORE. This theory holds that Nellywho returned to Amsterdam in 1943 when her romance souredmay have been the anonymous female caller who (allegedly) tipped off the SS about the Secret Annex, per the testimony of SS officer Karl Josef Silberbauer, who made the arrests. WIRED Media Group A detailed picture of the interior of the warehouse, reconstruction (1999). But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! They had to act as if everything was normal. Who betrayed the Frank family and why? 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. But soon, it proved she was unable to resolve things that way.. A petty thief and unsavory braggart, Van Maaren was investigated shortly after the war, but nothing was proved. The German-born Frank, who moved to Holland in 1933, ran a spice-trading company that sold goods to the Wehrmacht, the German army. The team hopes to reveal the results of its investigation on August 4, 2019the 75th anniversary of Anne Franks arrest. I think that nobody can judge van den Bergh who has not been in his position, Sullivan tells the Globe and Mail. You couldn't just do that.". Now, about 72 years later, the world may have an answer to the mystery: Maybe nobody betrayed them at all. Brigit Katz The sound might arouse suspicion. Specifically, Anne referred to the troubles brought upon the Voskuijl family by Nelly, and that the young woman was often away from home.. Jennifer Ouellette For decades, historians have debated who betrayed Anne Frank and her family. Then, in 2016, a team of investigators, led by a veteran FBI agent, decided to bring modern. 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. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. These include Lena Hartog, the wife of one of the warehouse employees; and Nelly Voskuijl, the sister of one of the Franks helpers. The proof is not final. The key to the mystery proved to be a note sent to Otto Frank shortly after his return to Amsterdam in June 1945. Willem van Maaren began working as the warehouse manager in 1943, one year before the secret annex was raided by police. Both theories are being given equal weight by David Barnouw, the historian charged with establishing the truth. Your Privacy Rights Anne was especially sorry about the latter, because it would be difficult to replace that many coupons. 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.". These are two of the most frequently asked questions when it comes to Anne Frank. Maarten Kuiper was one of the major betrayers of Jews in hiding during that time.". Certainly, Maarten Kuiper received money for the betrayals he made.". [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. I think he is the one who gave away the Franks' whereabouts to the caller although I don't think he physically made the call himself.". Left unsigned, the message named van den Bergh as the person whod reported the Franks hiding place to the Nazis. But all ofthe other people who were in hiding, and their collaborators, theyre just as important; theyre just not as famous.. Stockroom manager Willem van Maaren was another suspect, and since several possible culprits knew each other, there is also the possibility that more than one person betrayed the Frank. After the war, Frank removed content from Annes diary regarding Nellys collaboration. There was one sister, however, who took a different path, Van Wijk was told growing up. Willem van Maaren was one of the warehouse staff. The second theory, put forward by Austrian writer Melissa Mller, has a cleaning lady in the warehouse, Lena Hartog, as the traitor. As Pankoke tells 60 Minutes, the team managed to track down a copy of the note after reaching out to the son of one of the 1963 investigators. It's been such a long time, and most of the people who knew are dead.". See: Barnouw, David & Stroom, Gerrold van der, Who betrayed Anne Frank? Did Willem van Maaren betray Anne Frank? For more than 20 years, employee Van Maaren was the main suspect. Kugler and Kleiman were also arrested and held at a penal camp for "enemies of the regime.". Wertheim spoke with Vince Pankoke, a retired FBI agent. Since then, several independent investigations have identified different possible suspects. ", Ms Lee is also cautious but believes the secret of who shopped Anne Frank is there to be unearthed. Within five years, she was illegally buying bread and milk for her Jewish friends in hiding and just as important giving them her sought-after company. They also believe their work in solving this decades-old cold case resonates today. Anne died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen in the spring of 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated. It was edited by Will Croxton. While admitting that the case is circumstantial and some reasonable doubt remains, Pankoke et al. Investigators Are Turning to Big Data to Find Who Betrayed Anne Frank. "She was out of town working not close to Amsterdam. Kugler was a married man, and he never shared the secret of the hidden Jews with his wife, wrote Van Wijk. Only one of the people in hiding, Franks father, Otto, survived World War II. The second thing was there was nothing that actually tied her to information that would have led her to know that people were in the annex.". "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. The helpers and people in hiding did not trust him. And probably wasn't capable of betrayal, because had he betrayed the annex, he knew that he would end up losing his job.". A long-held theory proposed that a new employee at her fathers business, Willem van Maaren, tipped off the Nazis. Pankoke's team wondered: Did the suspected betrayer know the location of the secret annex? Frank wist wie hem weghaalde, De Telegraaf, 22 November 1963. The note came to authorities' attention during a 1963 investigation into the. My sister and my oldest brother are still angry with me about the content of the book, Van Wijk told The Times of Israel. Ed Sheeran plays guitar in court in bid to show he didn't steal Marvin Gaye song The case. #inline-recirc-item--id-a4ef05fe-8c88-11e2-b06b-024c619f5c3d, #right-rail-recirc-item--id-a4ef05fe-8c88-11e2-b06b-024c619f5c3d { Immediately after the war, Willem van Maaren was the only suspect in the investigation into the raid of the Secret Annex by the Sicherheitsdienst. [Otto Frank] might have done this out of loyalty for my mother, wrote Van Wijk. He was not betraying Otto Frank., Ronald Leopold, director of the Anne Frank House, points out that many missing pieces of the puzzle remain, telling the AP, I dont think we can say that [the] mystery has been solved now.. . They could, for example, not flush the toilet too often, because the water discharge from the Secret Annex ran along the storeroom. Anne chronicled their lives in the Annex in her diary for the next two years, making her final entry on August 1, 1944. 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. Many experts believe that someone alerted Nazi authorities to the hiding place of Frank and her family, but the culprit has never been determined. The second major burglary in the night of 9 to 10 April 1944 was much more serious. Lee says Ahlers not only turned in the Frank family, but may have blackmailed Otto Frank for years after the war, receiving payment for his silence about Frank's business with Nazi Germany at the beginning of World War II. He found Voskuijl in a desperate state with a mouthful of sleeping pills. She made him keep the episode their secret, he wrote. 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. Erik Somers, a historian at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, praised the depth of the investigation but criticized its conclusion. The book, released in English yesterday, points the finger of blame at a man called Anton Ahlers, a business associate of Otto's and a committed Nazi. Nevertheless, researchers do not rule out the potential that Frank and the others were the victims of a betrayal. And then they heard the footsteps leave again. 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. 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. Johannes Kleiman (on the left) and Victor Kugler in front of Prinsengracht 263, 1954. Ahlers had discovered, says Lee, that Otto's herb and food preservative business had supplied the Wehrmacht throughout the war and that, she suggests, would have been enough to see Otto branded a collaborator. 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. Fifteen-year-old Anne, her sister Margot and her mother Edith died in Nazi concentration camps. Magazines, Or create a free account to access more articles, Who Betrayed Anne Frank? | READ MORE. The case. Those hiding in the annex were wary of Van Maaren, and Anne Frank documented their suspicion in her diary. He long suspected his family was turned in by Willem van Maaren, a recently hired employee who was not in on the secret behind the bookcase. Anne wrote about it in her diary and attributed negative qualifications to him. "He may have got money for it. Wilhelm van Maaren One of the people who has. Pankoke and his team are compiling a huge database of other documents that may contain information relevant to the Frank case: lists of Nazi informants, lists of Jews who were turned over to the authorities, names of Gestapo agents who lived in Amsterdam, police records and so on. According to Pankoke, Van Dijk had betrayed the family of Otto Frank's second wife. After discovering some of the family's long-held secrets, Van Wijk now believes there is an unsettling reason behind his mother's relative "anonymity" among the helpers. [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. "On face value, you would think, okay, we found the guy," Pankoke said. They seem to work from the point of view that he was guilty and [find] a motive to fit that, Somers adds. | 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. Incorrect password. Titled Anne Frank: A Cold Case Diary, the investigative project was initiated by filmmaker Thijs Bayens and supported through crowd funding. In the middle of war, Nelly moved to Austria with a Nazi officer, only to have the relationship fall apart. Explanations for the discovery are mainly based on testimonies, because no documents about the raid on the Secret Annex have been preserved. Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel, 2023 The Times of Israel , All Rights Reserved, Anne Frank, aged 12, at her school desk in Amsterdam, 1941. Footsteps on the stairways, people shaking the bookcase. It has been widely believed that Willem van Maaren, a warehouse employee who worked for Otto Frank, outed the Frank family. My aunt Willy [Nellys sister] was furious until she died in 2015, just before the publication, he said. On 17 January 2022 the cold case teampresentedtheir findings. 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. 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. 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. At the time of Bep Voskuijls death in 1983, she was the least known of the four Dutch resisters who helped hide Anne Frank. The time will come when we will be people again and not just Jews! He vehemently denied any involvement and said that Victor Kugler had known about the pieces of wood and other things. Cookie Settings, Five Places Where You Can Still Find Gold in the United States, Scientists Taught Pet Parrots to Video Call Each Otherand the Birds Loved It, Balto's DNA Provides a New Look at the Intrepid Sled Dog, The Science of California's 'Super Bloom,' Visible From Space, What We're Still Learning About Rosalind Franklins Unheralded Brilliance. Historians have proposed competing hypotheses without definitive proof . 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 political leanings had estranged her so much from her family that she left their house. Van Wijk had always been told Nelly did not return to the Netherlands until the end of 1944 or early in 1945 after the betrayal of the annex. ", Dutch historians investigate new claims to identity of person who revealed hiding place of Jewish family, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Although Miep Gies is the best-remembered of the Dutch helpers, Voskuijl was the closest to Anne in age and temperament. There is no smoking gun because betrayal is circumstantial.. Nelly didnt just engage in an adolescent relationship with a soldier it went far beyond that, wrote Van Wijk. Join the Ars Orbital Transmission mailing list to get weekly updates delivered to your inbox. That was quite a feat. When Frank returned from Auschwitz in 1945, having lost his wife and two daughters, he may have feared his company would be confiscated if his prewar business with Germany became known.
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