A new investigation has revealed the identity of the suspect who betrayed Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis. A team of experts and historians, working for six years, is using state-of-the-art investigative techniques to uncover the “cold case”, writes the BBC.
After hiding for two years, the Jewish girl died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945 at the age of 15.
The diary she kept, published after her death, is the most famous source of information about Jewish life during World War II.
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Photo: Wikimedia Commons
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The name of the traitor is Arnold van den Berg – a notary who was also a Jew and lived in Amsterdam. He handed over a list of Jewish hideouts in Amsterdam to the German occupiers to save his family’s life, the report said.
Arnold van den Berg was a member of the Jewish Council in Amsterdam, an institution that was then obliged to impose Nazi beliefs in Jewish areas. It was disbanded in 1943 and its members sent to concentration camps.
However, the notary was not sent to a camp, but led a normal life. They suspected that there was a “mole” in the Jewish Council that leaked information about the Nazis.
“When Van den Berg lost all his protections, he had to give something valuable to the Nazis so that he and his family could be safe and not go to camp,” said Vince Punkouk, a former FBI agent.
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Photo: Wikimedia Commons
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Experts find evidence that Otto Frank, Anne’s father, knew about it, but kept it a secret. A copy of an anonymous letter received by Otto Frank in 1946 has been found. The name of the notary is also mentioned inside. The original letter has disappeared, but a copy of it has been found in the city archives of Amsterdam. This is how the name Arnold van den Berg came about.
“But we have to keep in mind that he was a Jew, which means he was put in a difficult situation by the Nazis to do something like that,” said Vince Punkouk.
A Danish newspaper reports that Arnold van den Berg died in 1950.
Anne Frank’s family, along with four others, hid from the Nazis in a house in Amsterdam from 1942 to 1944. There she wrote her famous diary. In August 1944, their hiding place was discovered. The family was sent to a concentration camp and killed. Only the father survives.
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