Now we may know who provided the Nazis with the address of Anne Frank and her family.
“The Diary of Anne Frank”This is the true story about a Jewish girl who was forced to run for her life during WWII. It has been translated into more than 70 languages and is available in many other languages.
It is, however, incomplete.
Anne was sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration center three days after her family was discovered.
While the identity of who disclosed the Frank family’s exact location is not known, Rosemary Sullivan and Thijs bayens have narrowed the field.
“We have investigated over 30 suspects in 20 different scenarios, leaving one scenario we like to refer to as the most likely scenario,” Bayens said. “Although we don’t have 100 percent certainty.”
Their investigation led them believe Arnold van den Bergh (a prominent Jewish notary) gave the Frank family the location of the Nazis so that he could save his own family from being held in concentration camps.
“What brought the people in late ’30s, that was such a close community, to giving up on each other?” he questioned. “How did fascism creep between the cracks and corrupt every human relationship and brought people to the desperate point of betraying each other, which is an awful, really awful situation?”
Ronald Leopold isn’t convinced, however, as the director of the Anne Frank Museum.
“No, I don’t think we can say that the mystery has been solved now,”He stated. “It’s an interesting theory that the team came up with. I think they came up with a lot of interesting information, but I also think there are still many missing pieces of the puzzle, and those pieces need to be further investigated in order to see how we can value this new theory.”
The Frank family – including Anne and her older sister Margot – started hiding in an Amsterdam attic with four other Jewish people in July 1942. They remained there for two years, until Nazi forces discovered them and took them to concentration camp.
Only Anne Frank’s father Otto Frank survived wartime among the hiding people in the secret annexe. Anne Frank was killed in Bergen-Belsen. She was fifteen years old.