Their mother, Edith, had died of starvation the year before. | Privacy Statement 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). "We can never be just Dutch, or just English, or whatever, we will always be Jews as well. The time will come when we will be people again and not just Jews! 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. On 17 January 2022 the cold case teampresentedtheir findings. Frank and her older sister, Margot, died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp less than a year later, in February 1945. In Joop van Wijks psychological diagnosis of his late mother Bep Voskuijl, she spent her post-war life being her own therapist in a kind of conversation with her alter ego. Ed Sheeran plays guitar in court in bid to show he didn't steal Marvin Gaye song "There's no doubt he did it," Anton Ahlers Jr. told the Volkskrant newspaper. He found Voskuijl in a desperate state with a mouthful of sleeping pills. She made him keep the episode their secret, he wrote. 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. Please enter valid email address to continue. Hermann van Pels hit the ground with an axe, which finally drove them away. Now, a biographer of Anne Frank has published a new theory which has intrigued the nation and revived a dark chapter in Dutch history - the failure to protect Jewish citizens from the genocidal Nazis. Historians have proposed competing hypotheses without definitive proof . 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. 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. Wilhelm van Maaren Wikipedia Republished // WIKI 2 Ahlers had so much information on Otto Frank. Cookie Settings, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 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. 2002 The Associated Press. 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. "There's no smoking gun but we are going to make a comparison of the two theories and see what we can rule out and in. Apparently, the police were called next, because a little while later, they came inside to take a look around. At the warehouse on the ground floor, the officers addressed employee Willem van Maaren. Since then, several independent investigations have identified different possible suspects. After discovering some of the familys long-held secrets, Van Wijk now believes there is an unsettling reason behind his mothers relative anonymity among the helpers. "He was a Dutch Nazi, a well-known traitor and an anti-semite and was very anti-Jewish. 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. 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. For more than 20 years, employee Van Maaren was the main suspect. Investigators Are Turning to Big Data to Find Who Betrayed Anne Frank Anne chronicled their lives in the Annex in her diary for the next two years, making her final entry on August 1, 1944. The authors suspicions were deepened during interviews he conducted for the biography. In Anne's diary it becomes clear that the Annex occupants also did not trust him. On August 4, 1944, police in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam raided a warehouse and arrested eight Jews who were hiding in an annex disguised behind a bookcase. January 16, 2022 / 8:09 PM After the war, Otto Frank, the only member of his family who survived the Holocaust, made statements indicating he knew who his betrayer was. During the next six months a team of experts from the Netherlands' Institute for War Documentation (NIWD) will pore over government records drawn up at the end of the war which detail the extent of Dutch collaboration with the Nazis. In her diary, Anne reported various attempted burglaries and actual burglaries. 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. Please try again or choose an option below. According to Pankoke, for Van den Bergh to have that level of protection, he must have had some leverage with the Nazis. Suddenly, a passer-by used a flashlight to take a look inside. Thats obvious, said Bertus Hulsman, who was the wartime boyfriend of Voskuijl and sometimes mentioned in the diary. In this book, he's much more flesh and blood. The helpers and people in hiding did not trust him. Two Dutch investigations, in 1947-48 and 1963-64, targeted the warehouse manager, Willem van Maaren, but were inconclusive. The second major burglary in the night of 9 to 10 April 1944 was much more serious. It is my contribution to peace, understanding, respect, and above all loyalty to every human being.. In her diary, Anne Frank wrote about Nelly on several occasions. A petty thief and unsavory braggart, Van Maaren was investigated shortly after the war, but nothing was proved. 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. 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.. "I think that people that are looking at this feel, 'Ah, maybe we can learn something if this case is solved,'" Pankoke said. The involvement of Van Dijk, who was executed in 1948 after admitting to collaborating in the capture of 145 people, had been previously claimed. For decades suspicion centred on a man called Willem Van Maaren, who worked in the warehouse attached to the Franks' hiding place. 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. 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. display: none; Fox on Parkinson's, and maintaining optimism When the people in hiding put it back, it was brutally kicked in again. The encounter ended with Nelly shouting, Just go to your Jews!. 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. It was edited by Will Croxton. Van Dijk was executed after the war for collaborating with the Nazis and betraying dozens of fellow Jews. Anne Frank Study Guide: Deaths, Dates, Betrayal, and History - Quizlet 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. Ars may earn compensation on sales from links on this site. 2023 Cond Nast. 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. Cookie Policy } "And maybe to the Holocaust survivors that are still out there, they understand that somebody still cares that these mysteries are solved. Instead, the groups arrest could have been a tragic accident. And, during a 1994 lecture, Secret Annex helper Miep Gies let slip that the informant died prior to 1960. The Germans were paying a bounty of 40 guilders per head, which was "a large amount in those days," she said. 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. 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. Was Anne Frank's family betrayed? After 72 years, historians have a new Who betrayed the Anne Frank family? Here's what we know now 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. All the more so because betrayal was never established beyond a doubt. And probably wasn't capable of betrayal, because had he betrayed the annex, he knew that he would end up losing his job.".