August 11, 2019 Comments Off on Anne Frank – 75 years later on Views: 1268 Looking Back, Nostalgia

The Anne Frank House opened in Amsterdam on 3 May 1960 and today this museum honoring the life and name of probably the most well-known Holocaust victim in the world attracts over a million visitors each year.

The building is located on a canal called Prinsengracht, in the central Amsterdam area, sharing the same address where Anne Frank hid from Nazi persecution with the rest of her family and friends for more than two years during WWII. It’s also where she kept a diary that documented her life.

While Anne Frank died in the camps of death, her wartime diary which she penned from the age of 13 through 15 survived and emerged as the best-read piece of writing created during the years of war.

The Anne Frank House museum entrance in central Amsterdam, Photo credit: Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0

Anne Frank and her family’s arrest took place on August 4, 1944, and for 75 years now, investigators are still seeking for the informant who exposed the Dutch-based family to the Nazis. Numerous investigations have been carried in the past and a number of suspects have been taken into account, but the answer still seems elusive.

For instance, a book published in 2018, The Backyard of the Secret Annex, and written by then 70-year-old Gerard Kremer claimed that Frank’s family was betrayed by a woman called Ans van Dijk. The book would not be the first instance someone considers van Dijk as the main suspect.

Anne Frank in 1940, while at 6. Montessori school, Niersstraat 41-43, Amsterdam (the Netherlands). Photograph by unknown photographer.

A trial after the war found van Dijk guilty of betraying over hundreds of Jews, including her own brother. The woman passed information to the Sicherheitsdienst Nazi intelligence service. In the trial, van Dijk confessed to 23 counts of treason and was found responsible for the arrest of at least 145 individuals. Although some sources suggest the number may have been significantly greater than that, i.e. that she was responsible for the lives of 700 people. When her trial ended in 1947, van Dijk received a death sentence. She became the only Dutch woman to face the death sentence for wartime wrongdoings.

As she was both a Jew and homosexual, Ans van Dijk was herself hiding from Nazi persecution. It was after her own arrest in 1943 that the woman had agreed to collaborate with the Nazis, approaching hopeless Jewish families in the Dutch capital and pretending she could provide them help and support.

Ans van Dijk in court, 24 February 1947

According to Kremer’s book, his father, Gerald Kremer Senior, who died in 1978, and who had worked in a central Amsterdam building utilized by German authorities and also the fascist-orientated Dutch National Socialist Movement (NSB) – van Dijk regularly visited and communicated with officers there. Shortly before the Frank family arrest, Kremer allegedly overheard van Dijk discussing a Prinsengracht location with Nazis.

On the occasion of the book release, however, the Anne Frank House’s official stance was that the book did not provide a clear-cut proof of van Dijk’s culpability.

Ans van Dijk is one of over 30 suspects, who, over the years, have been considered culpable for betraying Anne Frank and the rest of the group in the Secret Annex. Two other suspects have included employees at the warehouse, a man by the name of Willem Gerardus van Maaren and a woman by the name of Lena Hartog-van Bladeren.

Facsimile of the diary of Anne Frank on display at the Anne Frank Zentrum in Berlin, Germany, Photo credit: Rodrigo Galindez, CC BY 2.0

There had been two investigations on van Maaren, in 1947 and 1963, in which it was not proven he was the wrongdoer. In the case of Hartog-van Bladeren, it is said that she spread a perilous rumor that someone was hiding in the Prinsengracht building, no. 263. But Lena reportedly negated such claims, saying that she didn’t know anyone was taking refuge there, at least not until the raid took place, writes the National Geographic.

More than that, another intriguing theory dismisses that there was an informant at all; that Anne Frank and her family were not betrayed but discovered in a chance encounter.

“Gertjan Broek, a lead researcher with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, believes that the search for an informant might prevent researchers from discovering what really happened,” writes Sydney Combs for the National Geographic.

“There’s a chance that those in hiding were discovered during a search regarding fraudulent ration coupons,” Combs adds. More details about this investigation are published at the Anne Frank House website.

At the moment, Anne Frank’s cold case is the subject of a special, high-tech forensic investigation led by retired FBI agent Vincent Pankoke.

A view of Amsterdam, taken from the Westerkerk church tower, facing north. On the foreground is the famous Anne Frank house, which is now a museum. Photo credit: Stephane D’Alu, CC BY-SA 3.0

Anne Frank was aged just 15 when she was arrested and initially sent to Auschwitz. The Franks were captured in the Secret Annex along with the Van Pels family, Fritz Pfeffer, and two outside “helpers” of the group. All died in the camps of death, except for Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank. He would obtain his daughter’s diary upon his return to Amsterdam after the war.

In her diary, Anne mentions that she had wanted to be a writer. She was due to turn her diary into a book, but her arrest and subsequent death (probably of typhus) in the Bergen-Belsen camp where she was transferred, prevented her from accomplishing such undertaking. Otto Frank published the diary in her memory in 1947.

A page from Anne Frank’s first diary

Only last year, researchers also found out that the diary contained a number of dirty jokes penned by the young writer as well as her opinions on matters such as marriage and sex education. For decades, this content went unnoticed on hidden diary pages, and upon discovery shed new light on Anne’s character, that she was—like any other person her age—merely beginning to discover her sexuality.

The publication of the diary, today a Unesco-registered world heritage document, made Anne Frank one of the most world-famous writers and best-remembered Holocaust victim.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the arrest of Anne Frank.

We also thought to remind you of George Smith and the discovery of Gilgamesh

Tags: 75th anniversary of Anne Frank's arrest, Amsterdam, Anne Frank, Anne Frank House, the Netherlands