History HL Internal Assessment
Research question: ‘What led to the arrests of the people hiding in the hidden annex at Prinsengracht 263, on August 4th, 1944?’
Candidate code: knb494
Word count: 2120
Section A: Identification and Evaluation of Sources
What led to the arrests of the people hiding in the hidden annex at Prinsengracht 263, on August 4th, 1944? Two recent publications will form the basis of this investigation to answer this question:
Source A: ‘Investigative report on the betrayal and arrests of the inhabitants of the secret annex’ authored by Gertjan Broek, Anne Frank House, October 2016.
The purpose of the investigative report is to provide maybe the only account that there was no betrayal and in doing so it provides a useful summary of all individuals involved, which provided the framework for this investigation. It originates as an official publication from the Anne Frank House (AFH), a non-profit organisation devoted to Anne Frank’s life and time period1. As such it is a self-contained institution, not motivated by profit, allowing them to undertake objective and unbiased investigations without being compromised by external pressures. Additionally, the AFH has funding, resources, and equipment to undertake extensive investigations, including access to archive records, experts and the capacity to conduct fieldwork on the site of the arrests, resulting in this report. Published 72 years after the arrests, allowing for examination of many hypotheses that have been advanced throughout the years with a less emotional perspective on the event. The report further benefits from having Gertjan Broek, the primary researcher and author, who has been employed there as a researcher since 2008, providing him with years of expertise and understanding concerning Anne Frank.2 Broek possesses a PhD in philosophy from Amsterdam University3, providing vital insights into philosophical concepts such as justice, morality, and power, all of which are pertinent to the inquiry, offering him a unique viewpoint. Nevertheless, he lacks expertise in the NS, which may restrict his understanding of the bureaucracy of Nazi-occupied Amsterdam and how the NS executed raids.
Source B: "The Betrayal of Anne Frank" by Rosemary Sullivan, January 2022, in cooperation with the “Cold Case Team” (CCT).
Published last year, the book provides the most precise overview of the raid, to date. Resulting from the collaboration of twenty academics from several disciplines specifically tasked with investigating the circumstances surrounding the 1944 raid, it thus offers unique and diverse perspectives from multi-disciplinary fields from a variety of professions like historians, criminologists, behavioral psychologists, and data experts. Indeed, the purpose was to address the specific topic of my inquiry, achieved by looking at the case from the standpoint of a criminal investigator thanks to the team's leader, FBI veteran Vince Pankoke. In this case the newest technological advances were employed, notably the accessibility of AI technologies developed by Microsoft just for the investigation. This enabled the discovery of previously unknown links between different actors in the case. One potential drawback is in attempting to solve this high-profile case, questions have been raised about the team having felt pressured to present new ideas to make hasty conclusions, resulting in accusations of a misuse of historical sources and claims that the book is based on unsupported evidence4. Furthermore, not a single CCT member is a historian specialising on the Holocaust. This is a drawback since a historian with expertise in Holocaust studies would no doubt have gone into greater detail on the Jewish Councils and how the German and Dutch police used Jews as informants to apprehend other Jews. Despite such possible limitations, it remains the only real account of what happened.
Section B: Investigation
Anne Frank is a well-known diarist who rose to prominence with the release of her diary in 1947, chronicling her period in hiding from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic.5 With more than 30 million copies sold, it has become one of the most well-known books.6 The diary comes to an abrupt end just before she is detained by the Gestapo on August 4, 1944, and readers have been left wondering how she was discovered.7
After considerable public pressure, the Anne Frank House launched its own inquiry into the arrests in 2016, concluding that the raid was likely performed by the Gestapo in pursuit of illegal employment and ration-coupon fraud rather than any betrayal.8 A bombshell book employing cutting-edge technology now challenges that, naming a betrayer who is said to have informed the Gestapo. This essay examines the grounds on why this suspect is accused of betrayal, in order to determine what led to the arrest.
Led by Vince Pankoke a former FBI agent, the CCT challenged the AFH's assertion in 2022 by naming Arnold Van den Bergh, a well-known legal notary in Amsterdam9, as the betrayer. The conclusions made by the CCT are based on two main points of evidence: An anonymous note and lists of Jews in hiding. The former, which Otto Frank, Anne's father, received and served as a significant document in the initial investigation between 1963 and 1964 , for the first time identified van den Berg 20 years after the raid.10 The CCT concluded that the author of the note knew Van den Bergh and had inside information11 because the note claimed that "at J.A.'s (Zentralstelle für Jüdische Auswanderung) was a whole list of addresses [Van den Bergh] submitted."12 On its own this might not seem significant, however alongside the second point of evidence involving the lists of Jewish people in hiding lends the note credence. According to the anonymous note, the Jewish Council (J.A.) possessed lists of where Jews were hiding supported further by an independent report of the lists in a 1947 testimony by Ernst Philip Henn, a former military court translator13, who alleged that he overheard a Feldgendarmerie sergeant and a Gerichtsassessor discussing the handover of lists of addresses of Jewish people in hiding.14 By thus adding to the authenticity of the note this allows a probable motive to be identified. While serving on the Jewish Council's board during the Nazi occupation, Van den Bergh likely had access to the lists.15 According to Sullivan, this offers an explanation for the betrayal since he may have received a favour or been able to avoid prosecution in exchange for providing these lists.16 The evidence establishes Van den Bergh's access to the lists as well as his motive by establishing that the message's source was trustworthy and most likely an insider.
However such an accusation seems to be backed by a "shaky house of cards".17 Indeed there is little evidence that van den Bergh even knew who was hidden there in the first place. Reading the note there are doubts regarding its reliability because perhaps the author isn't an insider after all. For example the note refers to the Zentralstelle für Jüdische Auswanderung as the "Jewish Emigration" and "J.A.".18 The common appellation for the organisation was "Zentralstelle," which implies that the author is not familiar with the German persecution machinery.19 That aside, more strikingly the location provided for the Zentralstelle is incorrect. The Zentralstelle was not situated on Euterpestraat, but one street further, on Adama van Scheltemaplein.20 This is notable because the Sicherheitspolizei, Amsterdam's most feared institution, was housed on Euterpestraat rather than the J.A.21 Given that the locations may be near together but are situated on two parallel streets,22 it is curious how this oversight could have occurred, indicating unequivocally that it wasn't a J.A. insider who would have known its exact location. The primary objection raised when reviewing the lists of locations of Jewish people in hiding is the assertion that the lists never existed.23 All this just fails to answer the obvious question of why a body dedicated to saving Jewish lives would endanger them by maintaining these lists, especially considering the council was continually observed by the occupying troops.24 The criticism towards the lists existence is further called into question by Ronald Leopold, the director of the AFH, stating that he had heard rumours about the council collecting address lists, "but only from untrustworthy sources." This demonstrates how these assertions have previously been expressed but were never taken into consideration owing to their origin. Even if the lists existed, which many sources claim there is little proof for, Prinsengracht 263 was exceedingly unlikely to be included on them. This is because the hidden and their helpers got very little outside support and had no connection to organised resistance.25
Given the discrepancies in the note and the overall assertion that there were no lists, it might explain why the book was removed from shelves as the CCT's whole argument revolves around this. But should it be taken from shelves? The use of the phrase "Euterpestraat" may not address the actual location but rather the entire area that the SD occupied, including the J.A. as was commonly done during the war, as a person during the time recollected.26 Indeed, the note states “in Amsterdam, Euterpestraat," as the comma-separated phrase, as opposed to just saying "on" makes it obvious that the allusion is to an area. This demonstrates that the address was correctly referenced. As to the claim that such lists never existed, there have been multiple independent reports. Henn’s testimony is not the only account, for example Rudolf Pollak's worked at the Jewish Council, where he was responsible for providing food coupons to prisoners in concentration camps27 through which he built a card database with addresses of Jewish hiding sites from the fact that prisoners regularly penned letters to their loved ones in hiding.28 If he was able to collect this data why couldn’t others? Furthermore, when examining the post-war criminal inquiry into the contact committee, supplementary evidence supports the notion that the Nazis had access to lists of Jews in hiding. Here, Westerbork camp commander Albert Gemmeker instructed staff to get in touch with Jews who were hiding in Amsterdam and other places and give them the chance to avoid jail time in exchange for handing themselves in.29 The Camp personnel thus clearly had access to a list of locations where Jews were hiding in order to submit Gemmeker's offer.30 Overall, these two events illustrate two separate accounts of such lists, enhancing their credibility and lending the note itself validity.
In conclusion, despite its flaws, the investigation's findings are the closest we've ever come to an explanation of what truly led to the arrest. The hypothesis that Arnold Van den Bergh betrayed the Frank family, resulting in their incarceration, is the most believable explanation at this time based on the information that has been gathered, as well as providing a motive for the betrayal. Despite most of the evidence presented being circumstantial, the existence of the list supported by a number of different sources increases this argument as well as promotes the notes legitimacy. The facts still present a clear picture despite the fact that most of the evidence is circumstantial. The existence of the lists has been proposed by a number of different sources increasing the argument as well as establishing the notes legitimacy.
Section C: Reflection
When primary sources were scarce, I practiced my ability to collect neutral information from secondary sources. For instance, Sullivan offers a great deal of helpful, though circumstantial, information. But once I realized the CCT's goal was to demonstrate that they had identified a betrayer, it became obvious that to create my own impartial image of the scenario, I would need to disentangle narrative from factual data. I used the technique of looking for overlapping evidence across several sources as a way to assist with this. This was challenging since it required me to organize many ideas and claims, determining what was significant and structure it into a coherent argument.
When writing this essay during the anniversary of the Dresden bombing, I came across a comment by a German historical association arguing eyewitnesses of Dresden are not reliable due to the trauma they had to endure. This made me aware of how easily recollections may be manipulated, offering an explanation for Victor Kugler's inconsistent claims about the raid strategy throughout the years. Eyewitness accounts are frequently inaccurate because memories often shift when acquiring new information. For historians, this makes it difficult to acquire truthful first-hand accounts. With this instant, it was considerably more difficult as all of the eyewitnesses passed away about 40 years prior. This forced me to rely on accounts given to media and investigators many years ago.
One difficult part was when I began to doubt the investigation's morality. There is evidence Otto Frank knew who the betrayer was but chose to keep it hidden. This begs the question how far we are allowed to identify the betrayer if Frank did not want the betrayer made public. Arnold Van den Bergh's ancestors should also be taken into regard, since they have been opposing dragging the family name into disrepute, especially taking into consideration the accusation was made 72 years after his death in 1950. This calls into question how long it should take for us to litigate a crime in which the defendant has no chance in defending themselves. Whilst not part of the investigation, here in Germany this brought to mind a woman's experience in Berlin who purposely wanted to keep her name anonymous but was named despite this 80 years later. Therefore the question of “how far historians should be allowed to profit from such stories that may deserve to be kept quiet?” is not an unfamiliar one.
Bibliography:
“About us | Anne Frank House.” n.d. Anne Frank Stichting. Accessed March 1, 2023. https://www.annefrank.org/en/about-us/.
“Anne Frank betrayal book pulled after findings discredited.” 2022. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60843577.
Athenaeum-Polak, and Van Gennep. 1969. “Documents of the Persecution of the Dutch Jewry, 1940-1945.” 72. Netherlands:
BBC. 2022. “Anne Frank betrayal suspect identified after 77 years.” January 17, 2022. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60024228.
Broek, Dr. Gertjan, Anne Frank House., and Collections Department / Knowledge Centre. 2016. “An Investigative Report on the Betrayal and Arrest of the Inhabitants of the Secret Annex.” N.p.: AFH.
“Dr. Laurien Vastenhout.” n.d. NIOD. Accessed September 11, 2022. https://www.niod.nl/en/staff/laurien-vastenhout.
Farmer, Brit M., dir. 2022. 60 MINUTES OVERTIME. “Anne Frank's betrayal: Investigating other suspects.” CBS news. Aired January 16, 2022, on Paramount +. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anne-frank-betrayal-suspects-60-minutes-2022-01-16/.
Gerson, Natasha. 2022. “Less a mystery solved than a scam well played.” Jonet.nl.
https://jonet.nl/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Less-a-mystery-solved-factcheck-betraya
l-anne-frank-DEF-15.8.22.pdf.
“Gertjan Broek.” n.d. Koffietijd. Accessed March 2, 2023.
https://www.koffietijd.nl/gast/gertjan-broek.
“Gertjan Broek Historisch onderzoeker at Anne Frank Stichting.” 2021. Linkedin.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gertjan-broek-44104a31/?originalSubdomain=nl
Henn, Ernst P. 1947. “Testimony,” inventory no. 107491. In Centraal Archief von de Bijzondere Rechtspleging. Nationaal Archief, The Hague, Netherlands.
Het Parool. 1950. “Notaris Van den Bergh in Londen overleden.” Het parool (Amsterdam), October 31, 1950, 5.
Lee, Carol A. 2003. “The Hidden Life of Otto Frank.” 212. N.p.: HarperCollins.
Levine, Allan. 2022. “Opinion: We still don't know who betrayed Anne Frank.” The Globe
and Mail.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-did-a-jewish-notary-betray-anne-fra
nk-a-new-book-says-probably-most/.
Müller, Melissa. 2014. Anne Frank: The Biography: Updated and Expanded with New
Material. N.p.: Picador.
Perry, Gillian W. n.d. “About Anne Frank.” Anne Frank Center. Accessed August 1, 2022.
https://annefrank.com/about-afc/about-anne-frank/.
“Reconstruction: the arrest of the people in hiding | Anne Frank House.” n.d. Anne Frank
Stichting. Accessed August 3, 2022.
https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/reconstruction-arrest-people-hi
ding/.
Schoenmaker, Officer J. 1948. “Police report,” No. 414, 6-7. In Bureau oorlogsmisdrijven 58.
Assen, Netherlands.
Siegal, Nina. 2022. “Scholars Doubt New Theory on Anne Frank's Betrayal.” The New York
Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/18/books/anne-frank-betrayal-arnold-van-den-berg
h.html.
Sullivan, Rosemary. 2022. The betrayal of Anne Frank. N.p.: HarperCollinsPublishers.
Van der Zee, Sytze. 2010. Vogelvrij: De jacht op de joodse onderduiker, Pollak lists. Edited by NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Amsterdam, Netherlands: De Bezige Bij.
Wallet, Prof. dr. Bart, Dr. Petra van den Boomgaard, Dr. Bart van der Boom, Dr. Laurien Vastenhout, and Aaldrik Hermans. 2022. Report The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Refutation Critical Analysis of the Argumentation and Use of Historical Sources.
Appendices A.
Farmer, Brit M., dir. 2022. 60 MINUTES OVERTIME. “Anne Frank's betrayal: Investigating other suspects.” CBS news. Aired January 16, 2022, on Paramount +.
B. English translation of the anonymous note:
“Your hideout in Amsterdam was reported at the time to the Judische Auswanderung in Amsterdam, Euterpestraat, by A. van den Bergh resident at Vondelpark at the time, Oranje Nassaulaan. At J.A.’s was a whole list of addresses he submitted.”
Sullivan, Rosemary. 2022. The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation. HarperCollins Publishers Limited. P. 224
FOOTNOTES
1 “About us | Anne Frank House” Anne Frank Stichting. https://www.annefrank.org/en/about-us/. 2 “Gertjan Broek.”. Koffietijd. https://www.koffietijd.nl/gast/gertjan-broek.
3 “Gertjan Broek Historisch onderzoeker at Anne Frank Stichting.” 2021. Linkedin. https://www.linkedin.com/in/gertjan-broek-44104a31/?originalSubdomain=nl.
4 “Anne Frank betrayal book pulled after findings discredited.” 2022. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60843577.
5 Müller, Melissa. 2014. Anne Frank: The Biography: Updated and Expanded with New Material. N.p.: Picador. 6 Perry, Gillian W. n.d. “About Anne Frank.” Anne Frank Center. Accessed August 1, 2022. https://annefrank.com/about-afc/about-anne-frank/.
7 “Reconstruction: the arrest of the people in hiding | Anne Frank House.” n.d. Anne Frank Stichting. Accessed August 3, 2022. https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/reconstruction-arrest-people-hiding/.
8 Broek, Dr. Gertjan, Anne Frank House., and Collections Department / Knowledge Centre. 2016. “An Investigative Report on the Betrayal and Arrest of the Inhabitants of the Secret Annex.” N.p.: AFH.
9 Het Parool. 1950. “Notaris Van den Bergh in Londen overleden.” Het parool (Amsterdam), October 31, 1950, p. 5. https://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=ABCDDD:010835040:mpeg21:a0130.
10 Sullivan, Rosemary. 2022. The Betrayal of Anne Frank. N.p.: HarperCollinsPublishers. 224
11 Sullivan “The Betrayal of Anne Frank” p.228
12 View appendix B
13 Sullivan “The betrayal of Anne Frank” p.268-69
14 Henn, Ernst P. 1947. “Testimony,” inventory no. 107491. In Centraal Archief von de Bijzondere Rechtspleging. Nationaal Archief, The Hague, Netherlands.
15 BBC. 2022. “Anne Frank betrayal suspect identified after 77 years.” January 17, 2022. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60024228.
16 Sullivan “The betrayal of Anne Frank” p.264-65
17 Corder, Mike. 2022. “‘Betrayal of Anne Frank’ pulled by Dutch publisher amid criticism.” The Washington Post, March 23, 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/03/23/betrayal-anne-frank-dutch-publisher/.
18 View appendix B
19 Wallet, Prof. dr. Bart, Dr. Petra van den Boomgaard, Dr. Bart van der Boom, Dr. Laurien Vastenhout, and Aaldrik Hermans. 2022. Report The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Refutation Critical Analysis of the Argumentation and Use of Historical Sources. p.36.
20 Documents of the Persecution of the Dutch Jewry, 1940-1945. Netherlands: Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep, 1969. p.72
21 Report The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Refutation Critical Analysis of the Argumentation and Use of Historical Sources. p.36.
22 Personal visit in November 2021
23 Levine, Allan. 2022. “Opinion: We still don't know who betrayed Anne Frank.” The Globe and Mail.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-did-a-jewish-notary-betray-anne-frank-a-new-book-says-prob ably-most/.
24 Siegal “Scholars Doubt New Theory on Anne Frank's Betrayal.” 25
p.54.
Gerson, Natasha. 2022. “Less a mystery solved than a scam well played.” Jonet.nl.
https://jonet.nl/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Less-a-mystery-solved-factcheck-betrayal-anne-frank-DEF-15.8.22.
pdf.
26 Sullivan “The betrayal of Anne Frank” p.229
27 Van der Zee, Sytze. 2010. Vogelvrij: De jacht op de joodse onderduiker, Pollak lists. Edited by NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Amsterdam, Netherlands: De Bezige Bij.
28 Sullivan “The betrayal of Anne Frank” p.269
29 Schoenmaker, Officer J. 1948. “Police report,” No. 414, 6-7. In Bureau oorlogsmisdrijven 58. Assen, Netherlands.
30 Sullivan “The betrayal of Anne Frank” p. 267
