Status: 03/23/2022 4:35 p.m
The book about the “betrayal of Anne Frank” has been taken off the market after sharp criticism from experts. Experts came to the conclusion that the thesis that a Jewish notary had betrayed the Frank family to the Nazis was not tenable.
The Dutch publisher Ambo Anthos has taken the book about the “betrayal of Anne Frank” from the market after fundamental criticism from experts. This was announced by the publisher in Amsterdam. Booksellers were asked to take the work off the shelves. The previous evening, historians had presented a critical analysis of the controversial book. The publisher also repeated its apology.
The book by the Canadian writer Rosemary Sullivan argues that the Jewish notary Arnold van den Bergh most likely betrayed to the German occupiers in 1944 the hiding place of the Jewish youth Anne Frank’s family in Amsterdam. Van den Bergh is said to have tried to protect his own family from deportation and death.
Controversial report by a Coldcase team
Anne Frank (1929-1945) lived for two years with her family and four other Jews in a secret annexe in Amsterdam, hiding from the German National Socialists. There she wrote her world-famous diary. In 1944 the hiding place was betrayed and the residents were deported to concentration camps. Only father Otto survived and published his daughter’s diary after the war.
A so-called cold case team of international experts led by a former FBI agent had investigated who had betrayed the Frank family’s hiding place. According to the report presented in January, the Jewish notary is said to have been the traitor.
Like a “swaying house of cards”
The “betrayal of Anne Frank” was criticized immediately after it was published in January. A six-person expert group of historians and other academics has now published a 69-page rebuttal.
The pattern of the investigation was to draw one conclusion at a time, take it as true, and then use it as the basis for the next conclusion. “This makes the whole book a shaky house of cards, because if a single step proves wrong, the cards above it collapse as well,” the expert group wrote.
Haven’t all your doubts been cleared yet?
The head of the writing team, Pieter van Twisk, admitted on Dutch broadcaster NOS that the critics’ work was very detailed and extremely reliable. She gives him something to think about. “But at this stage I don’t see that van den Bergh can definitely be ruled out as the prime suspect,” he added.
The filmmaker Thijs Bayen, on whose idea the investigation into the betrayal of Anne Frank is based, admitted in January that the book was based on circumstantial evidence and that the allegation against van den Bergh was not one hundred percent certain.
“You are contributing to a great injustice”
The granddaughter of the accused notary, Mirjam de Gorter, called on the US publisher Harper Collins to take the book off the market worldwide. “With this work you exploit the story of Anne Frank and contribute to a great injustice,” she said on Dutch radio.