Post by Admin on Jan 17, 2022 19:27:49 GMT
A Jewish notary has been named by a cold case team led by a former FBI agent as the prime suspect for the betrayal of Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis.
Arnold van den Bergh, who died in 1950, has been accused on the basis of six years of research and an anonymous note received by Anne’s father, Otto Frank, after his return to Amsterdam at the end of the war.
The note claims Van den Bergh, a member of a Jewish council, an administrative body the Germans forced Jews to establish, had given away the Frank family’s hiding place along with other addresses used by those in hiding.
He had been motivated by fears for his life and that of his family, it is suggested in a CBS documentary and accompanying book, The Betrayal of Anne Frank, by Rosemary Sullivan, based on research gathered by the retired FBI detective Vince Pankoke and his team.
Pankoke learned that Van den Bergh had managed to have himself categorised as a non-Jew initially but was then redesignated as being Jewish after a business dispute.
It is suggested that Van den Bergh, who acted as notary in the forced sale of works of art to prominent Nazis such as Hermann Göring, used addresses of hiding places as a form of life insurance for his family. Neither he nor his daughter were deported to the Nazi camps.
Anne Frank hid for two years in a concealed annexe above a canalside warehouse in the Jordaan area of Amsterdam before being discovered on 4 August 1944, along with her father, mother, Edith, and sister, Margot.
The young diarist was sent to Westerbork transit camp, and on to Auschwitz concentration camp before finally ending up in Bergen-Belsen, where she died in February 1945 at the age of 15, possibly from typhus. Her published diary spans the period in hiding between 1942 and her last entry on 1 August 1944.
Despite a series of investigations, the mystery of who led the Nazis to the annex remains unsolved. Otto Frank, who died in 1980, was thought to have a strong suspicion of that person’s identity but he never divulged it in public.
Arnold van den Bergh, who died in 1950, has been accused on the basis of six years of research and an anonymous note received by Anne’s father, Otto Frank, after his return to Amsterdam at the end of the war.
The note claims Van den Bergh, a member of a Jewish council, an administrative body the Germans forced Jews to establish, had given away the Frank family’s hiding place along with other addresses used by those in hiding.
He had been motivated by fears for his life and that of his family, it is suggested in a CBS documentary and accompanying book, The Betrayal of Anne Frank, by Rosemary Sullivan, based on research gathered by the retired FBI detective Vince Pankoke and his team.
Pankoke learned that Van den Bergh had managed to have himself categorised as a non-Jew initially but was then redesignated as being Jewish after a business dispute.
It is suggested that Van den Bergh, who acted as notary in the forced sale of works of art to prominent Nazis such as Hermann Göring, used addresses of hiding places as a form of life insurance for his family. Neither he nor his daughter were deported to the Nazi camps.
Anne Frank hid for two years in a concealed annexe above a canalside warehouse in the Jordaan area of Amsterdam before being discovered on 4 August 1944, along with her father, mother, Edith, and sister, Margot.
The young diarist was sent to Westerbork transit camp, and on to Auschwitz concentration camp before finally ending up in Bergen-Belsen, where she died in February 1945 at the age of 15, possibly from typhus. Her published diary spans the period in hiding between 1942 and her last entry on 1 August 1944.
Despite a series of investigations, the mystery of who led the Nazis to the annex remains unsolved. Otto Frank, who died in 1980, was thought to have a strong suspicion of that person’s identity but he never divulged it in public.