why did willem van maaren betray the franks

After all, one of her sisters and her father joined the high-risk effort of hiding, feeding, and sustaining eight Jewish fugitives. In 1947, Otto Frank and the helpers filed a complaint against him with the political police on suspicion of betrayal. It is still early days for the investigation, but Pankoke told Wootson Jr. of the Post that the team has already produced some interesting information. Historians have proposed competing hypotheses without definitive proof . He stole goods and was generally considered dishonest. A petty thief and unsavory braggart, Van Maaren was investigated shortly after the war, but nothing was proved. Many experts believe that someone alerted Nazi authorities to the hiding place of Frank and her family, but the culprit has never been determined. In the years since Anne Franks diary was published, investigators and historians have proposed several other potential informants. Former FBI special agent Vincent Pankoke was looking forward to a relaxing retirement hanging out at the beach when he left the agency. When did the Van Pels (Van . Gies and Voskuijl were questioned but not detained. Footsteps on the stairways, people shaking the bookcase. Kugler and Kleiman were also arrested and held at a penal camp for "enemies of the regime.". Hermann van Pels hit the ground with an axe, which finally drove them away. The first police investigation: Was WILLEM VAN MAAREN the betrayer? After discovering some of the family's long-held secrets, Van Wijk now believes there is an unsettling reason behind his mother's relative "anonymity" among the helpers. Out of all the warehouse staff, only Johan Voskuijl was aware of the presence of the people in hiding. There's no evidence to indicate that he knew who was hiding at any of these addresses, Pankoke tells 60 Minutes. [But] 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.. Many experts believe that someone alerted Nazi authorities to the hiding place, but the identity of the culprit has never been conclusively determined. According to the author, he has mostly been met by cold shoulders. We dont have 100 percent certainty. A family's darkest secret sheds light on an enduring mystery, Were really pleased that youve read, Please use the following structure: example@domain.com, Send me The Times of Israel Daily Edition. Apparently, the burglars were still about. For decades, historians have debated who betrayed Anne Frank and her family. Nevertheless, researchers do not rule out the potential that Frank and the others were the victims of a betrayal. In a 2018 book,The Backyard of the Secret Annex,Gerard Kremer, the son of a member of the Dutch resistance of the same name, argues that a Jewish woman,Ans van Dijk, was responsible for the Franks' capture. According to Gerald Kremer's The Backyard of the Secret Annex, the Guardian reports, the Franks were betrayed by Anna "Ans" van Dijk, a Jewish woman executed in 1948 for her collaboration in. A New Study Suggests Nobody Did. Explanations for the discovery are mainly based on testimonies, because no documents about the raid on the Secret Annex have been preserved. In the years following Nelly Voskuijls death in 2001, Van Wijk attempted to learn more about the relationship between his mother and his aunt from members of the large family. First published in English in 1952 as "The Diary of a Young Girl" and later as a stage play and film, her story made her a symbol both of the Holocaust and of Dutch bravery. Lages answered that the credibility of the tip-off would have been checked first, unless it came from an informant who had proved to be reliable before. . Among those captured was Anne Frank, a 15-year-old schoolgirl who had spent over two years living in the cramped safehouse with her parents and older sister. Writer Rosemary Sullivan chronicled the painstaking process in a new book, The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation. Two other plausible suspects emerged over the years: Lena van Bladeren-Hartog (died 1963) and Tonny Ahlers (1917 - 2000). 2023 Smithsonian Magazine } They had come very close to being discovered! The team hopes to reveal the results of its investigation on August 4, 2019the 75th anniversary of Anne Franks arrest. Van Maaren was suspicious and would set "traps" to . Anne received the famous diary on June 12, 1942, for her 13th birthday, around the time the Gestapo began deporting Jews in Amsterdam. Her work has appeared in a number of publications, including NYmag.com, Flavorwire and Tina Brown Media's Women in the World. Years later, after Anne Frank became famous for her diary, readers wondered what had gone wrong. On Aug. 4, 1944, they went to investigate 263 Prinsengrachtthe same building where Anne and her family were hidingafter receiving tips of fraudulent food-ration cards and illegal employment happening there. It's possible, Brock suggested, that there was no betrayal, and the SS raid was really part of ongoing attempts to track down purveyors of illegal goods. Anne chronicled their lives in the Annex in her diary for the next two years, making her final entry on August 1, 1944. Only one of the people in hiding, Franks father, Otto, survived World War II. Meanwhile, in 2018, a book claimed to offer evidence that Anne Frankand her family were betrayed by a Jewish woman who was executed after World War II for collaborating with the Nazis. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! But despite suspicions, there was no conclusive evidence van Maaren betrayed the family. Privacy Statement "However, after Otto Frank went into hiding, Tonny Ahlers was out doing other things in different parts of the city. Nevertheless, Lee's book "is interesting because it takes a more balanced view of Otto Frank," Barnouw said. But the evidence against Van Maaren was again inconclusive, and he died in 1971 professing his innocence. We strive for accuracy and fairness. Co-authored by Belgian journalist Jeroen De Bruyn, Van Wijks book is called, Anne Frank: The Untold Story, with the subtitle, The hidden truth about Elli Vossen, the youngest helper of the Secret Annex. (As 15-year old Anne refined her diary with an eye toward eventual publication, Elli Vossen was the pseudonym she gave to Bep.). In April 1944 Anne wrote: "One day this terrible war will be over. January 16, 2022 / 8:09 PM Her father, Otto Frank, survived, and spent the rest of his life trying to discover who had betrayed his family. Van Maaren pointed up the stairs, but the police already seemed to know exactly where to go. However, because Anne wrote about Nellys collaboration with the Nazis in the original version of her her diary, the authors proved that Nelly returned to Amsterdam in 1943. Preview: Michael J. As Pankoke tells 60 Minutes, the team managed to track down a copy of the note after reaching out to the son of one of the 1963 investigators. Downstairs they think it is too risky. While his mother referred to as Elli Vossen in The Diary of Anne Frank risked her life to hide eight Jews, his aunt had behaved shamefully during the occupation of the Netherlands, it was whispered. There is no smoking gun because betrayal is circumstantial.. Van Maaren was later the subject of multiple investigations related to the betrayalincluding one by famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthalbut he always maintained his innocence, and none of the cases ever produced any evidence against him. It takes just a few seconds. The German-born Frank, who moved to Holland in 1933, ran a spice-trading company that sold goods to the Wehrmacht, the German army. They seem to work from the point of view that he was guilty and [find] a motive to fit that, Somers adds. The trove of information is so large that a human in their lifetime might not be able to review it, Pankoke tells Stephanie van den Berg andAnthony Deutsch of Reuters. Left unsigned, the message named van den Bergh as the person who'd reported the Franks' hiding place to the Nazis. Willem van Maaren began working as the warehouse manager in 1943, one year before the secret annex was raided by police. After spending two years eluding Nazi capture while in hiding in Amsterdam, the Frank family was discovered on. Ahlers himself was jailed for collaboration after the war and bizarrely Otto wrote letters to the authorities pleading for his release. Vince Pankoke, who tracked Colombian drug traffickers in recentyears atthe FBI, will lead a multidisciplinary team of experts, among them historians, psychological profilers and police detectives. ", By Arthur Max Bep Voskuijl was only 18 when she started working for the spice and jam company owned by Otto Frank. Two other plausible suspects emerged over the years: Lena van Bladeren-Hartog (died 1963) and Tonny Ahlers (1917 - 2000). Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday. Her writing created a trail to judicial documents from other parts of the Netherlands, resulting in the latest theory. 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. However, the investigation did not prove his guilt. Otto, for his part, never publicly named van den Bergh, who died in 1950, as the informant. Thats obvious, said Bertus Hulsman, who was the wartime boyfriend of Voskuijl and sometimes mentioned in the diary. The helpers did not trust warehouse worker Willem van Maaren. He strongly suspected a warehouse employee named Willem van Maaren, who had sparked concerns among the Franks and the people who helped them hide. As a member of the local Jewish Counciladministrative bodies established by the Nazis to govern Jewish communities in German-occupied Europevan den Bergh had access to lists of addresses where Jews were known to be in hiding. "Van den Bergh wasn't deported," said Pieter van Twisk, a veteran Dutch journalist who co-founded the investigative project and led the research team. So now we have a request. / CBS News. The Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, the researchers who published the authoritative version the diary and the caretaker of the Frank papers, said Ahlers had not been a suspect until Lee started probing his background for her book, "The Hidden Life of Otto Frank," published in March. Not even the arresting officer questioned after the war by Simon Wiesenthal, the Austrian Nazi hunter, could say who the caller was and investigators are convinced that no written record of the caller's identity exists. Updated: March 29, 2023 | Original: November 1, 2017. ", Patricia Bosboom, of the Anne Frank Foundation which maintains the house where Anne hid, said Lee's theory was plausible, "but it's still only a theory. It was clear that Tonny Ahlers had no knowledge that Otto Frank and the others were hiding in the annex.". "His own mother said he had a bad character from birth and that he was always parading his Nazi connections," the author told the Guardian yesterday. The diary Frank kept during her confinement is now considered one of the most important accounts of the Holocaust, but the circumstances of her arrest have always been cloaked in mystery. Apparently, the police were called next, because a little while later, they came inside to take a look around. They asked SD chief Willy Lages whether it was common for his former service to jump to action upon receiving a telephone tip-off about people in hiding. Born in 1949, Van Wijk remembers a childhood shrouded in mystery about what Nelly did during the war. He also was distrustful of the Ahlers family, saying they simply may be seeking notoriety. Join the Ars Orbital Transmission mailing list to get weekly updates delivered to your inbox. As for opportunity, the team examined whether the suspect was in Amsterdam at the time of the August 1944 raid or might have any opportunity to betray the hiding place. Nelly fell in love with a young Austrian Nazi and had worked for a year on a German air base. How were the people in hiding discovered? 2022 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. That was a major setback, because Van Maaren was curious, and he noticed that people had been in the building after closing time. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday. Although he published his mothers most intimate secrets, Van Wijk believes his book would eventually have gained her approval, because she greatly upheld the truth, he said. The subject is still being researched. He had previously asked questions about the Annex and tried in many ways to see if there was anyone who had entered the building after closing hours. Ahlers was among the suspects Pankoke and his team investigated and ultimately ruled out. 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. 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. Bruce Springsteen on "Nebraska," and the emergence of Springsteen the poet Last year, the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam floated a new theory: Nazi officers who were investigating illegal work and ration fraud at the warehouse accidentally stumbled upon the Jews hiding in the annex. This went well until Johan fell ill in 1943 and was replaced by Willem van Maaren. Ed Sheeran plays guitar in court in bid to show he didn't steal Marvin Gaye song As The New York Timesreported, they hoped to bring new technology, including forensic accounting, computer modeling and even crowd sourcing research, to examine existing evidence such as Anne Franks diary and the Amsterdam building where the Franks hid. They had to act as if everything was normal. Historians made no further headway. She added that the people who were helping to hide the Frank family had been looking into the question of how to get this fellow out of the place from every possible angle. Their mother, Edith, had died of starvation the year before. Not only did he build the famous swinging bookcase to conceal the hiding place, but he served as an unofficial watchman over the annex through his employment in the warehouse below. My sister and my oldest brother are still angry with me about the content of the book, Van Wijk told The Times of Israel. ", Dutch historians investigate new claims to identity of person who revealed hiding place of Jewish family, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. He referred them to the first floor, where the office staff was. A detailed picture of the interior of the warehouse, reconstruction (1999). Pankoke and his team eliminated her as a suspect for a few reasons. Just three days later, German police led by SS officers stormed the Annex, arresting the Franks and the Van Pels family and transferring them to the Westerbork transit camp after interrogation. Previously, Voskuijl and others had placed suspicion on a disgruntled male warehouse employee, Willem van Maaren. The people in hiding shared their suspicion, without knowing him or even having seen him. It is believed, however, that documents pertaining to Anne Frank and other residents of the annex were destroyed in a 1940s bombing. [My mother] often lived in the past after the war and mulled over the split she found herself in: the loss of her Jewish loved ones from the Annex on the one hand, and her loyalty to her sister [Nelly] who had proven her services to the occupier on the other hand, wrote Van Wijk. In the authors opinion, his mother had an internal conflict that led her to opt for as little attention as possible, practically complete radio silence, from the beginning of the Sixties, he wrote. Please enter valid email address to continue. When they came to raid the building, they unexpectedly discovered Anne and the others. My mother had lots of troubles with Nelly during the war and after the war, Van Wijk told The Times of Israel. 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. (modern). It is believed that an anonymous tip helped guide the Nazis to the secret annex, yet despite decades of investigations, the identity of the informant has never been proven. The evidence that led Pankoke's investigators to their conclusion pointed to the alleged betrayer as much as it ruled out other suspects including some who had previously been the subject of speculation. Privacy Statement These include Lena Hartog, the wife of one of the warehouse employees; and Nelly Voskuijl, the sister of one of the Franks helpers. Terrified, the people in hiding kept very quiet. Although the team's evidence points to Van den Bergh as the prime suspect, they concede this is a circumstantial case. The burglars managed to take two cash boxes containing forty guilders, blank giro and bank cheques, and coupons for 150 kilograms of sugar.

Bbq Catering Meat Per Person, Articles W