why did willem van maaren betray the franks

display: none; Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Miep Gies, and Bep Voskuijl were the only employees who knew where the Franks (and later, the Van Pels family) were hiding. ", Ms Lee is also cautious but believes the secret of who shopped Anne Frank is there to be unearthed. Suddenly, a passer-by used a flashlight to take a look inside. Trending News Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. "He was a Dutch Nazi, a well-known traitor and an anti-semite and was very anti-Jewish. Michael J. The Amsterdam home where she and her family hid is today a museum known as the Anne Frank House. WIRED Media Group Willem van Maaren began working as the warehouse manager in 1943, one year before the secret annex was raided by police. As fast as they could, they all fled back to the hiding place. He only stuck to the logic of assumptions of which he did not know the validity, nor did he need to know the validity in order to give a reasoned answer. Tellingly, the books title in Dutch was, Silent No More., The biography is my mission, said Van Wijk, who dedicated the book to Dutch resisters against Nazism. Clearly, the museums report concludes, the last word about that fateful summer day in 1944 has not yet been said.. This deterioration took place around the period in which a call was made to Gestapo headquarters by a young woman it was later claimed to inform on the Frank familys hiding place. On July 6, the Frank family began their lives in the Secret Annex attached to the office building at Prinsengracht263,where Otto Frank had worked. In a 2002 biography of Anne Frank's father, Otto, author Carol Ann Lee suggested the betrayer might be Tonny Ahlers, a Dutch National Socialist. January 16, 2022 / 8:09 PM Nobody knows for sure who betrayed the Franks, but after doing research, I believe that Tony Ahlers is guilty. Speaking with Marsha Lederman of the Globe and Mail, Sullivan says the researchers characterize the notary as a tragic figure, not as some kind of villain. Bayens tells the AP that [w]e went looking for a perpetrator and we found a victim., Van den Bergh gave that list as a way of keeping him and his family out of the extermination camps, Sullivan says. According to Pankoke, for Van den Bergh to have that level of protection, he must have had some leverage with the Nazis. My aunt Willy [Nellys sister] was furious until she died in 2015, just before the publication, he said. #inline-recirc-item--id-a4ef05fe-8c88-11e2-b06b-024c619f5c3d ~ .item:nth-child(5) { Click the link in that email to complete your registration. The house where she and her family hid in a sealed-off room at Prinsengracht 263 in central Amsterdam was turned into a museum in 1960 and receives almost a million visits a year, mainly from the US. "He may have got money for it. Apparently, the police were called next, because a little while later, they came inside to take a look around. Now, according to Daniel Boffey of the Guardian, a retired FBI agent has launched an investigation into the enduring historical mystery, hoping to find out once and for all who betrayed the young diarist. We had all stopped breathing audibly by then, 8 hearts were pounding, footsteps on our stairs, then a rattling on the bookcase door.' Investigators Are Turning to Big Data to Find Who Betrayed Anne Frank. Your Privacy Rights We have investigated over 30 suspects in 20 different scenarios, leaving one scenario we like to refer to as the most likely scenario, filmmaker and team member Thijs Bayens tells Mike Corder of the Associated Press (AP). More than three decades after Elisabeth Bep Voskuijls death, her son co-authored a biography of the least-known among the Dutch resisters who hid Anne Frank and other Jews during the Holocaust. Fox on Parkinson's, and maintaining optimism, Bruce Springsteen on "Nebraska," and the emergence of Springsteen the poet, Michael J. Potential informants ruled out by the group ranged from Willem van Maaren, an oft-cited suspect who worked in the warehouse where the Franks were hiding, to Nelly Voskuijl, a Nazi sympathizer and the sister of Secret Annex helper Bep Vokuijl, to Ans van Dijk, a Jewish collaborator whose actions led to the arrest of some 145 people. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community. We strive for accuracy and fairness. The eight people in hiding did not trust him, and often felt suspicious of him. You couldn't just do that.". The note came to authorities' attention during a 1963 investigation into the. 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. Thats obvious, said Bertus Hulsman, who was the wartime boyfriend of Voskuijl and sometimes mentioned in the diary. Bruce Springsteen on "Nebraska," and the emergence of Springsteen the poet The Germans were paying a bounty of 40 guilders per head, which was "a large amount in those days," she said. Meilan Solly is Smithsonian magazine's associate digital editor, history. And who among us, if our families were on the line and heading to extermination camps, wouldnt do what we could? Hours earlier, Karl Josef Silberbauer, the Austrian commander of the squad, received a phone call from the head of the Amsterdam security police who said eight Jews were hiding in the warehouse. believe the most likely culprit is a local Jewish leader named Arnold van den Bergh. When the arrest of Anne Frank and the people who hid with her took place, Van Maaren worked as the manager of the warehouse of Opekta and Gies & Co, in whose buildings the Secret Annex was situated. Pankoke also showed Wertheim a note, which investigators say Otto Frank received after the war, that specifically names Van den Bergh as the betrayer. A long-held theory proposed that a new employee at her fathers business, Willem van Maaren, tipped off the Nazis. That, Ms Lee suggests, is more likely to have been a man called Maarten Kuiper, who made a living from the betrayal of Jews and who moved into Ahlers' flat with him the day before the raid. Voskuijls father, Johan, was also in on the secret of the Jews in hiding. In June 1947 1,500 copies of the Dutch edition of the diary were produced. Suspicion for being the betrayer In several investigations after the war, Van Maaren was the prime suspect for the betrayal of Anne Frank; however Van Maaren publicly denied he was responsible. Anne died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen in the spring of 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated. . Ed Sheeran plays guitar in court in bid to show he didn't steal Marvin Gaye song They had come very close to being discovered! Experts have discovered, for instance, the identity of a person who betrayed at least one other family to the Nazis. They had to act as if everything was normal. Pankoke's team discovered that Van den Bergh, a prominent Jewish businessman in Amsterdam with a wife and kids, lived an open life in the middle of Nazi-occupied Holland at a time when Jews were being deported to concentration camps. How were the people in hiding discovered? Throughout the course of the hiding, Bep and Kugler had fallen in love, as Bep later confessed to her sister Diny with red cheeks, wrote Van Wijk. Although he heard about Nellys romantic liaisons with Germans while growing up, Van Wijk was never told about his aunts role as a Nazi collaborator. Records discovered in the Dutch national archives by journalist Pieter van Twisk, co-founder of the research project, seemingly corroborated the claim, suggesting that a member of Amsterdams Jewish Council turned over lists of addresses where Jews were hiding. Annes relationship with her sister Margot was standoffish, and Voskuijl helped fill some of the gap between them. I think he got the information from Ahlers," Lee said. Stockroom manager Willem van Maaren was another suspect, and since several possible culprits knew each other, there is also the possibility that more than one person betrayed the Frank family. Kremer's father was an acquaintance ofVan Dijk in Amsterdam and Kremer writes that in early August 1944, his father overheardVan Dijkspeaking about Prinsengracht, where the Franks were hiding, in Nazi offices. Already a member? At one point, Kugler was prepared to end his marriage in order to move to South America with Voskuijl, but she did not want to wreck their marriage. In other words: If a call was actually made that morning, and the response was immediate, then one may conclude that the informant was known and reliable, according to Lages. When the people in hiding put it back, it was brutally kicked in again. "She was out of town working not close to Amsterdam. But Anne was not yet famous and staff were overworked. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. For more than 20 years, employee Van Maaren was the main suspect. The researchers also investigated the theory, first raised by scholars at the Anne Frank House in 2016, that the SS discovered the hiding place by chance while searching the warehouse for evidence of illegal work and ration coupon fraud. Left unsigned, the message named van den Bergh as the person who'd reported the Franks' hiding place to the Nazis. 2002 The Associated Press. It is believed, however, that documents pertaining to Anne Frank and other residents of the annex were destroyed in a 1940s bombing. The subject is still being researched. However, the investigation did not prove his guilt. Ahlers was a member of the Dutch Nazi NSB movement, appeared in Nazi propaganda films and was thrown out of his lodgings after his landlady discovered a swastika flag on the wall and a uniform bearing SS insignia hanging in his wardrobe. They were successful, and the burglars ran off. Anne, her sister and parents, were caught in the two-story annex with Hermann van Pels, who had worked in Frank's company, with van Pels' wife and teen-age son, and with Friedrich Pfeffer, a dentist. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday. In Van Wijks assessment, there is no doubt Nelly knew about the Jews in hiding. Ms Lee also claims that Ahlers was blackmailing Otto, first in 1941 by threatening to release a letter which would have led to his deportation, and astonishingly after the war too and even as recently as 1980 when Otto died. 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. Lee says Ahlers not only turned in the Frank family, but may have blackmailed Otto Frank for years after the war, receiving payment for his silence about Frank's business with Nazi Germany at the beginning of World War II. The second theory, put forward by Austrian writer Melissa Mller, has a cleaning lady in the warehouse, Lena Hartog, as the traitor. 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. As the whole world now knows, 15-year-old Anne Frank died (likely of typhoid fever) a day after her older sister, Margot, at the Bergen-Belsen death camp between February and April 1945. My sister and my oldest brother are still angry with me about the content of the book, Van Wijk told The Times of Israel. On a warm August morning in 1944, SS officers stormed into an Amsterdam warehouse and arrested Anne Frank, her parents, her sister and four other Jews who had been hiding in a secret annex at the back of the building. 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. 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. In addition to Johan Voskuijls involvement, another of the Voskuijl sisters sewed clothes for the Jews in hiding, making the effort a family affair. Out of the seven others who hid with her, her father, Otto Frank, was the only one who survived the Holocaust. This theory continues on an assumption that in itself is insufficiently proven, that is that betrayal by telephone led to the raid. It probably never will be. We question several elements of the investigation: read our statement. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. He was the warehouse manager as well as the father of Bep, who worked in the office and was one of the helpers. A New Study Suggests Nobody Did. At the warehouse on the ground floor, the officers addressed employee Willem van Maaren. [Otto Frank] might have done this out of loyalty for my mother, wrote Van Wijk. The Pankoke team's story was featured in a segment on 60 Minutes earlier this week (see the video at end of this post) and is covered in detail in a new book by Rosemary Sullivan: The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation. Her political leanings had estranged her so much from her family that she left their house. Johan was important to them because he could keep an eye on the other warehouse workers to see if they noticed anything. Still, experts remain focused on the fate of the teenage diarist whose life was cut tragically short. Ahlers was among the suspects Pankoke and his team investigated and ultimately ruled out. 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.). ", Barnouw told The Associated Press he and another colleague will review old files and testimony for new revelations. 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. Searching for Anne Frank's betrayer, 80 years on.

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