A new investigation has identified a suspect who may have betrayed Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis.
Anne Frank died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945, aged 15, after being in hiding for two years. Her diary, which was published after her death, is the most famous first-hand account of Jewish life during the war.
A team including an ex-FBI agent said that Arnold van den Berg, a Jewish figure in Amsterdam, was probably the one who “gave up” the Frank family to save his own family.
The team, consisting of historians and other experts, spent six years using modern investigative techniques to “crack the cold case”. This included using computer algorithms to search for connections between many different people.
Arnold van den Bergh had been a member of Amsterdam’s Jewish council, a body that was forced to implement Nazi policy in Jewish areas. It was disbanded in 1943 and members were sent to concentration camps.
However, van den Bergh was not sent to a camp and was living in Amsterdam as normal at the time. There was also a suggestion that a Jewish Council member had been feeding the Nazis information.
“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,” former FBI agent Vince Pankoke said in an interview.
The team said that they found possible information that Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank, may have known that van den Bergh had betrayed them and kept it a secret.
In the files of a previous investigator, they found a copy of an anonymous note sent to Otto Frank identifying Arnold van den Bergh as his betrayer.
Sources: BBC, France24
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