Enlarge / Anne Frank in 1940. A new book, The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation , by Rosemary Sullivan, claims that a retired FBI special agent and a team of investigators have solved the mystery of who betrayed the Frank family to the Nazis. (credit: Public domain)
Former FBI special agent Vincent Pankoke was looking forward to a relaxing retirement hanging out at the beach when he left the agency. Instead, he was drawn into solving a famous cold case: the question of who betrayed Anne Honest and her family to the Nazis, leading to their arrest and deportation to a concentration camp. Only the father, Otto Frank , survived. To find his own answer to that question, Pankoke assembled his own crack team of dogged investigators. They spent five years poring over every bit of pertinent material, setting up an extensive online database, and developing an AI program to help them sift through it all and find new connections.
While admitting that the case is circumstantial and some reasonable doubt remains, Pankoke et al . believe the most likely culprit is a man named Arnold van den Bergh, a local Jewish leader who may have handed over lists of addresses where fellow Jews were hiding in order to the Nazis in order to be able to protect his own family. The Pankoke team’s story was featured in a segment on 60 Minutes earlier this week (see video at end of post), and will be covered in detail in a new book by Rosemary Sullivan, The Betrayal of Anne Outspoken : A Cold Case Investigation .
Millions of people have read The Diary of Anne Open since it was first published posthumously within 1947. It’s been translated in to 70 languages and inspired the theatrical play and subsequent Oscar-winning 1959 film , featuring Millie Perkins inside the title role. Anne Fluent was born in Frankfurt, Germany, but the family fled the country and settled in Amsterdam after Adolf Hitler came to power. They didn’t flee quite far enough: the Nazi occupation associated with the Netherlands began in May1940 and eventually forced the Franks (and many other Jews) directly into hiding.
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