Book reveals individual who would have betrayed Anne Frank

One of the great mysteries of World War II may have been solved after an investigation identified a Jewish notary as the main suspect of having betrayed the then adolescent Ana Frank -author of her famous diary- and her family.

This investigation was carried out by a former FBI agent around this almost eight decades unsolved mystery about who betrayed Anne Frank and allowed the Nazis to find their hideout, revealed a book that will be released this week.

Arnold van den Bergh could have revealed Anne Frank’s hiding place in Amsterdam to save his own family, according to an investigation that lasted six years and was reflected in the work The Betrayal of Anne Frank (The betrayal of Anne Frank) by the Canadian author Rosemary Sullivan, which will be presented to the public on Tuesday.

The accusations against Van den Bergh, who died of cancer in 1950, are based on evidence, including an anonymous letter sent to Anne’s father, Otto Frank, after World War II, according to excerpts published by Dutch media on Monday.

The Anne Frank Museum told the AFP that the investigation led by retired FBI agent Vincent Pankoke, is a “fascinating hypothesis” but warned that further investigation is needed.

The 15-year-old teenager, whose ordeal became famous after the publication of her diary written between 1942 and 1944, when she and her family were clandestine in an Amsterdam apartment, she was arrested in 1944 and died the following year in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Theories about how the Nazis got to the hideout the Frank family occupied for two years, until they were discovered on August 4, 1944, abound, but Van den Bergh’s name hadn’t received much attention.

“We don’t have a smoking gun”

This new research was carried out with the use of modern techniques, including artificial intelligence to analyze huge amounts of data.

Thus, the list of suspects was reduced to four people, including Van den Bergh, who was a founding member of the Jewish Council, an organization that the Nazis imposed on Jews to organize deportations.

The researchers discovered that Van den Bergh managed to avoid deportation, but this order was rescinded close to the betrayal that allowed the Nazis to find the Frank family.

“We don’t have a smoking gun, but we do have a hot gun with empty shell casings all around it.”Pankoke told Dutch broadcaster NOS.

“This had been frozen,” Pankoke, who had previously investigated Colombian drug cartels, declared on the ’60 Minutes’ broadcast of the US network CBS.

For its part, Ronald Leopold, director of the Anne Frank House, warned that doubts remain about the aforementioned anonymous note and that more in-depth investigation is necessary.

“We have to be very careful about putting someone down in history as the person who betrayed Anne Frank, if you are not 100 or 200% sure of it.” highlighted the AFP.

After the raid, the family was deported and Ana and her sister died in the Bergen-Belsen camp the following year. His father posthumously published his diary, which has since sold more than 30 million copies.. (I)