Anne Frank's Betrayer Might Have Just Been Identified

It’s a cold case so chilling, we’re still wondering about it 77 years on.

We probably didn’t think we’d be getting an “Anne Frank update” in 2022, but an investigation has identified a lead suspect who may have given Anne and her family up to the Nazi’s.

The suspect is Jewish notary (AKA a legal verifier/witness), Arnold van den Bergh. The team behind the investigation believes the betrayal of the Franks was most likely ‘to save his own family.’

Van Den Bergh had allegedly lost all his protections exempting him from concentration camps, so he “had to provide something valuable to the Nazis that he’d had contact with.”

That was a list of addresses, including where Anne and her family had been hiding for two years. She later died in a Nazi concentration camp at the age of 15.

Watching “60 Minutes” segment on how Nazis discovered Anne Frank, family and friends. The saddest part to me is the discovery timeline: they went into hiding in July 1942, they were discovered in August 1944 and WW2 ended in Europe in May 1945. They were so close.

— Stella Beat (@StellaBeat) January 17, 2022

Her diary was published after her death by her father, Otto Frank, and it’s the most famous first-hand account of Jewish life during the war.

The investigation team of historians, an ex-FBI agent, and computer algorithms have spent six years trying to crack this cold case.

They said they’d battled with the revelation that another Jewish person was possibly the betrayer. They also found evidence suggesting Anne’s father may have known but kept it secret.

Investigating team member, Pieter van Twisk, told 60 Minutes it’s speculated Otto kept quiet because he didn’t want to publicise unconfirmed information that could feed anti-Semitism, or for Van den Bergh’s three daughters to suffer.

Meanwhile, the ABC reports that although The Anne Frank House Museum welcomed the new findings, further investigation is still needed.

So many twists and turns in such a tragic story, even all these years later.

The discoveries from the investigation are detailed in a new book, The Betrayal of Anne Frank. There’s also reportedly a doco on the way.

Header Image: Canva via Everett Collection/REX