Anne Frank Wasn't Betrayed? New Research Could Rewrite History

Anne Frank, whose diary turned one of the crucial iconic portrayals of the Holocaust, died in a focus camp in 1945 after she, her household and buddies had been found by safety companies whereas hiding in secret rooms in an workplace constructing in Amsterdam.

Anne's father, Otto Frank, was the one survivor of the eight Jews who spent greater than two years hiding within the "Secret Annex" at 263 Prinsengracht. He suspected that his household and buddies had been betrayed, maybe by an untrustworthy worker of one of many places of work under. In the meantime, biographers theorized that maybe relations of the Franks' helpers ratted them out, resulting in the household's arrest in August 1944. [Images: Missing Nazi Diary Resurfaces]

Now, new analysis means that the German Safety Service could not have been in search of hidden Jews once they discovered Anne and the seven others hiding along with her. Quite, they may have been investigating different actions on the workplace and easily stumbled throughout the hidden households by likelihood, in response to historians on the Anne Frank Home, the museum in Amsterdam devoted to preserving the "Secret Annex" the place Frank, her sister, her dad and mom and 4 different Jews spent greater than two years in hiding.

"The query has all the time been, who betrayed Anne Frank and the others in hiding?" historian Gertjan Broek wrote in a brand new paper launched by the museum. "This specific give attention to betrayal, nonetheless, limits the angle on the arrest."

In hiding

New paperwork concerning the employment of a minimum of three of the policemen who raided the Secret Annex in 1944 reveal that these policemen weren't tasked primarily with searching down Jewish individuals in hiding, Broek wrote. The Franks had been dwelling in secret rooms above Otto Frank's former firm with one other household, the van Pels, and a dentist named Fritz Pfeffer. The Franks had been in hiding, not setting a foot outside, since July 6, 1942. (The van Pels joined every week later, and Pfeffer arrived in November 1942.)

The circumstances of the invention of Frank and the others have all the time been murky. Investigators arrived on the workplace constructing at 263 Prinsengracht in midmorning on Aug. four, 1944, Broek wrote, and spent a while looking out the premises. In the course of the search, the Secret Annex, hidden behind custom-built bookshelves, was found. The Franks, the van Pels and Pfeffer had been arrested. All had been despatched to focus camps. Anne and her sister Margot died of typhus in February or March 1945 at Bergen-Belsen focus camp.

Varied theories have held that an worker of one of many corporations within the workplace constructing, or maybe a member of the family of somebody who labored there, tipped off the German Safety Service, known as the Sicherheitsdienst, to the individuals in hiding. However no proof of a betrayer's id has ever been discovered, Broek wrote.

An opportunity discovery?

Now, new paperwork recommend that maybe there was no betrayer in any case. Three of the confirmed members of the raiding celebration on the Secret Annex had been longtime law enforcement officials whose work was associated to circumstances involving money, jewellery or confiscation of the belongings of Jews who had been deported. One, Gezinus Gringhuis, was working not for the Sicherheitsdienst on the time of the raid, however for the Particular Unit of the Central Investigation Division, Broek discovered. Thus, Broek wrote, Gringhuis' job would not have concerned trying to find Jews in hiding. [Photos: Escape Tunnel at Holocaust Death Site]

However, Anne's diary mentions the arrest of two salesmen within the workplace constructing, Martin Brouwer and Pieter Daatzelaar, for ration-card fraud, or the unlawful use or promoting of the ration playing cards required to purchase meals. She writes that due to the arrest, the households within the Annex had no coupons for meals, indicating that the household was fed, partly, by unlawful ration playing cards. (Anne talked about having to be quiet within the Annex in order that Daatzelaar wouldn't hear them, suggesting that the 2 ration-card sellers didn't know they had been there, Broek wrote.)

As a result of Gringhuis' job concerned investigating financial violations resembling ration-card fraud, the investigation that discovered the Franks might need been targeted on different actions illegalized through the Nazi regime, Broek wrote. Such actions included against the law for which one of many Franks' helpers on the surface was arrested: "work refusal," or permitting individuals to work who had been known as up for imprisonment in German forced-labor camps. ("Work refusal" referred to the refusal of the orders to take part in slave labor.)

"An organization the place individuals had been working illegally and two gross sales representatives had been arrested for dealing in ration coupons clearly ran the danger of attracting the eye of the authorities," Broek wrote. "Whereas trying to find individuals in hiding, fraud with ration coupons might be detected, since they [people in hiding] had been usually depending on clandestine assist. Conversely, investigating this type of fraud would possibly very nicely result in the invention of individuals in hiding."

The hyperlinks between ration fraud and the investigators hasn't been proved, Broek warned, and it is nonetheless completely potential that Anne, her household and their buddies had been betrayed. However specializing in betrayal has restricted earlier analysis on what occurred to the Franks, he wrote.

"Clearly, the final phrase about that fateful summer time day in 1944 has not but been stated," Broek wrote.

Unique article on Dwell Science.