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The family has let a friend and confidant know that they are concerned about their ‘good name and reputation’, says Paul Theelen in conversation with the British newspaper Daily Mail. The six-year research and the accompanying book went all over the world this week, but experts and historians have already questioned the conclusions.
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Notary Arnold van den Bergh (center) in 1942 as a member of the Jewish Council.
Ⓒ Image bank NIOD/Joh. The hare
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The international ‘cold case team’ led by the Dutch researcher Pieter van Twisk states with 85% certainty that Arnold van den Bergh would have passed on hiding addresses to the Sicherheitsdienst in order to preserve his life. The family says there are inconsistencies in that story. According to them, Van den Bergh’s wife and three daughters were already in hiding when Anne’s family was caught by the Nazis in August 1944. The motive for treason is therefore completely unclear, according to Theelen, whose grandfather was the youngest. daughter of Van den Bergh hosted between 1943 and ’45.
“She is upset about the revelations and doesn’t know if they are true or not. She didn’t know about these claims until the investigators told her about it,” says Theelen on behalf of the granddaughter. “They claim that her grandfather betrayed Anne Frank to save his own family. But that just doesn’t make sense as a motive. He had three daughters and they were all in hiding at the time.”
note
The researchers also cite an anonymous note that came into the hands of Otto Frank, Anne’s father, after the war, in which the alleged betrayal of the notary was explained. “Your hiding place in Amsterdam was reported at the time to the Jüdische Auswanderung in Amsterdam, Euterpestraat, by A. van den Bergh, at the time living near Vondelpark, O. Nassaulaan. At the JA there was a whole list of addresses he passed on,” it said.
Only in 1964 did father Frank come out with the note. Investigators found a copy of the note in a police officer’s family records.
The story of Anne Frank and her family is one of the best known from the Second World War. Thanks to her diary, in which she described how she went into hiding with her loved ones in the Secret Annex on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam. What has remained a great mystery all these decades is who betrayed the Frank family and ensured that the German occupiers found and deported them. Anne Frank eventually died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
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