A cold case investigation into the betrayal of Anne Frank and her family has identified a suspect.
The teenage Jewish diarist died in a Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen in 1945, after two years of hiding during World War II.
Now a cold case team that has spent years trawling evidence has named the person who they believe reported the 15-year-old and her family to the Nazi occupiers in Amsterdam. They say prominent Jewish notary, Arnold van den Bergh “gave up” the hiding place of the Franks to save his own family.
Anne and seven other Jewish people were found by the Germans in a secret annex above a canal-side warehouse in Amsterdam in August 1944.
The investigators, who included historians, filmmakers and former FBI agents, spent six years cracking the cold case, using modern investigative techniques and computer algorithms to search for connections to the teenager’s betrayal.
According to their research, Mr Van den Bergh was a member of Amsterdam’s Jewish Council, a wartime body formed to implement Nazi policy.
It was disbanded in 1943, and its members sent to concentration camps. But Mr van den Bergh, who was living in Amsterdam as normal at the time, remained behind, the team said.
The group’s research suggested that a member of the Jewish Council had been providing information to the Nazis.
Read the article by James Ried in The New Daily.