Who Betrayed Anne Frank?

• Author: Zissou, Rebecca
• Position: TIMES PAST

The German-born teen diarist was captured by the Nazis in 1944 after two years in hiding. Nearly 75 years later, a new investigation aims to solve the mystery of who tipped off the police.

Behind a bookcase that doubled as a secret door, 15-year-old Anne Frank and her family lived in constant fear. If discovered in their hideout--an annex in the back of her father's business--they could be sent to their deaths.

It was 1944, and throughout Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, the forces of Nazi Germany were rounding up Jews. For the Franks, any wrong move--a loud noise, a window left open, a flash of light--could give them away.

On August 4, the Franks' worst fears were realized. At around 11 a.m., Dutch police, led by a Nazi officer, forced their way into the annex and dragged everyone away at gunpoint. Soon, all eight people living in the hideout were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Just one of them--Anne's father, Otto--would survive.

Today, much is known about the Franks' time in hiding thanks to Anne's diary, first published in 1947 (see "Through Anne's Eyes," p. 21). Yet one aspect of her story has remained a mystery: how authorities found out about the hiding place. Otto, who passed away in 1980, long suspected that one of his employees, Wilhelm van Maaren, had tipped off the police. Yet investigations by Dutch officials in 1948 and 1963 turned up nothing.

Now a new team of detectives, analysts, and historians is determined to crack the case. Using modern technology, including 3-D models of the annex, artificial intelligence, and advanced computer software, they're hoping to figure out who--if anyone--betrayed the Franks' whereabouts.

Vince Pankoke, the former FBI agent in charge of the investigation, says his goal isn't to punish those involved (most of the suspects are now dead), but to finally solve the case and call attention to the atrocities of the Holocaust. The team hopes to reveal its findings on August 4, 2019, exactly 75 years after the raid on the annex. "This is one of the greatest historical mysteries," says Deborah Lipstadt, a historian at Emory University in Atlanta. "Anne's story continues to touch so many people. We all want to find out what happened."

Hitler's Rise to Power

Anne was 3 years old when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933. At the time, the country was in desperate shape. Its defeat in World War I (1914-18) and the economic crisis that followed had left the nation humiliated and impoverished.

Hitler gave Germans a scapegoat for all the country's problems: Jews. He blamed them not only for Germany's loss in the war but also for the nation's high unemployment rate and other issues. Once in power, he took advantage of widespread anti-Semitism to systematically target the Jewish people, stripping them of their rights, forbidding them to work in certain jobs, and organizing a boycott of Jewish businesses.

Before long, thousands of German Jews, including the Franks, fled the country in a desperate attempt to escape the Nazis. In 1934, Anne and her family settled in Amsterdam, where they thought they would be safe. And at first, they were. But in 1940, less than a year after Hitler's invasion of Poland sparked World War II (1939-45), German forces occupied the Netherlands. The conflict eventually engulfed much of the world, pitting the Allies (led by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union) against the Axis Powers (led by Germany, Italy, and Japan).

As Hitler's empire grew, hundreds of thousands of European Jews tried to flee to other countries, fearful that they would be deported to concentration camps. But many of them had nowhere to go. Several nations, including the U.S., had set quotas that limited the number of refugees they would accept. Anne and her family were trapped.

Life in Hiding

In 1942, Otto decided that his family had no choice but to go into hiding. His business, which sold pectin, an ingredient in jam, was made up of offices and a warehouse. Behind them was a small building, called an annex, that could be reached only from the inside.

Soon after the Franks moved in, they were joined by Otto's business partner, Hermann van Pels; van Pels's wife, Auguste; and their 15-year-old son, Peter. Another Jewish man, Fritz Pfeffer, arrived a few months later. Several of Otto's employees agreed to help them, risking their lives to provide food and other necessities.

Despite the constant danger, Anne tried to remain optimistic. "It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality," she wrote in her diary on July 15, 1944, less than three weeks before the raid on the annex. "It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart."

After their arrest, Anne and the others in the annex were sent to Auschwitz, in Poland, the most notorious of all the concentration camps. Anne and her older sister, Margot, were eventually transferred to Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp in Germany, where they are believed to have died of typhus in February 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated by British troops.

By the time Germany surrendered in May 1945, the Nazis had killed more than 6 million European Jews--two-thirds of the continent's Jewish population--and 5 million others, including Poles, Roma, Communists, and the disabled. Many had been...