A Jewish businessman is “very likely” to have been the person who betrayed the whereabouts of Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis, a six-year cold case investigation has concluded.
A relatively unknown figure, Arnold van den Bergh, has emerged as the prime suspect in a painstaking investigation that has called on the expertise of around 20 historians, criminologists and data specialists.
Anne Frank and her family were discovered on 4 August 1944, having spent two years hiding in a secret annex attached to what had been her father Otto’s place of work.
They had been hiding with their friends, the Van Pels family, and the dentist Fritz Pfeffer. Otto Frank would become the only one, out of the eight hidden Jews, to survive the war.
After his release from Auschwitz concentration camp, Otto Frank went on to publish his daughter’s diaries, capturing the imagination of millions of readers worldwide.
Now an investigation has used 21st century techniques, such as artificial intelligence and forensic analysis, to narrow down the list of individuals who may have turned over the Franks to the Nazis.
Led by retired FBI detective, Vince Pankoke, the investigators ruled out a warehouseman, Wilhem van Maaren, who has long been suspected of being the culprit, because he would have lost his job if Otto Frank’s business collapsed.
Having ruled out close associates of Otto Frank or neighbours, the team focused on the Jewish Council, a body set up by Nazis in Amsterdam. A member of the council had been turning over names and addresses to the Nazis in a bid to save themselves from the concentration camps, the investigation discovered.
The Jewish businessman Arnold van den Bergh was a member of the council and neither him nor his immediate family died in the camps, according to the new research. One of the investigators, Pieter van Twisk, told the daily NRC newspaper yesterday that it was “very likely” that Van den Bergh had betrayed the Franks in order to save his own family.
The team concluded that Van den Bergh, who died in 1950, had access to information about the hiding place through his role on the council. “He was simply a very smart man who played it safe. Someone who played three-dimensional chess,” Mr Van Twisk said. “You would like to know exactly how Van den Bergh did it, and we don’t know that.”
He referred to an anonymous note that Otto Frank received shortly after the war identifying “A. van den Bergh” as the person who revealed the Frank’s hiding place. Mr Van Twisk added: “You would, of course, also want to know who wrote that anonymous note, and we don’t know that either.”
Historian Erik Somers of the Dutch Niod Institute for war praised the extensive investigation but said he was sceptical that Van den Bergh was the true culprit.
He said: “They seem to work from the point of view that he was guilty and found a motive to fit that.”
According to Mr Somers there could be many reasons why Van den Bergh was never deported as “he was a very influential man”.
The full results of the investigation will be revealed in a programme on the CBS documentary series, 60 minutes, as well as a book, The Betrayal of Anne Frank, by Rosemary Sullivan.
