The cold case team that investigated the betrayal of Anne Frank says they are shocked by all the criticism of the book that has been published about this. That is what lead researcher Pieter van Twisk said in a long statement on the website of the cold case team on Thursday.
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In the statement is entered point by point on the criticism the book has received over the past week because of the conclusion that the Frank family had been betrayed by the Jewish notary Arnold van den Bergh.
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According to Van Twisk, Van den Bergh was not designated as the perpetrator in the investigation, but was ‘as the main suspect in the most likely scenario’. The main defense from the cold case team is that critics focus too much on the individual evidence. ,,We have used the metaphor of the puzzle more than once; we collected so many pieces of the puzzle that the image on the puzzle became more and more clear. (..) What the critics do is take one piece at a time and conclude on that basis that that is insufficient evidence for our conclusion.”
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In the book, researchers state that the Amsterdam notary wanted to protect his own family by sharing a list of hiding places with the German occupier. Multiple experts and organizations cast doubt on that theory. In the statement, Van Twisk emphasizes that they do have indications for the existence of the list.
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Anonymous note
One of the further pieces of evidence is an anonymous note that father Otto Frank is said to have received shortly after the war. It stated that Van den Bergh had shared Frank’s hiding place with the Germans and that more addresses were shared by him. Critics say that’s not enough evidence. However, according to Van Twisk, there is so much essential information on the note that it must have been written ‘by someone who knew what he or she was talking about’.
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The contents of the note, the place and time at which it was delivered, the many witness statements about the existence of lists of people in hiding, the statements and behavior of Otto Frank and the helpers, the behavior of Van den Bergh and the general context of a country at war, enslaved by an anti-Semitic ideology that excludes, persecutes, sets people against each other and eventually destroys them, etc. etc. All this together gives a good basis for suspicion.”
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‘Kind of weird shit’
Van Twisk previously stated that the cold case team did not conduct a historical investigation, but a criminal investigation. According to Van Twisk, there has now been ‘a kind of weird frenzy’ around the book and he and his team have ‘researched with integrity for five years and brought up a lot’.
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The Dutch publisher Ambo Anthos had announced to postpone additional printing of the book pending further explanation from the investigation team.
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