The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation(109)

2“Work of the Contact-Afdeling (Contact Division) at Westerbork,” deposition, Screen Writers Guild, no. 50943, 11. See also NIOD, Doc. 1, file no. 248-0294, no. 20, 56.

3Officer J. Schoenmaker, Assen, the Netherlands, Process Verbal (police report), No. 414, 6–7, Bureau oorlogsmisdrijven 58 (Office of War Crimes 58), June 4, 1948. The report is 117 pages long.

4Detective Marinus van Buren, police report, March 16, 1948, NIOD, Doc. 1, 248-0040.

5Albert Konrad Gemmeker, testimony, folder 2 (31), September 15, 1947; Willy Lages, testimony, folders 2a and 2b, CABR, inventory no. 107491, t/m (to and including) VIII Box 1; both NI-HaNa.

6Ernst Philip Henn, testimony, September 15, 1947, inventory no. 107491, t/m (to and including) VIII, CABR, NI-HaNa.

7Sytze van der Zee, Vogelvrij: De jacht op de joodse onderduiker (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2010), 361; NIOD Doc. 1, R. Pollak, Signaleentenblad lists, 384–90.

8POD interview with Arnold van den Bergh, July 12, 1945, NI-HaNa, CABR-Scheppers.

9Vince Pankoke and Brendan Rook, interview with Esther Kizio, February 26, 2019.

10Only David Cohen, one of the two chairmen of the Jewish Council, actually appeared for trial. See Ido de Haan, “Jurys d’honneur: The Stakes and Limits of Purges Among Jews in France After Liberation,” in Jewish Honor Courts: Revenge, Retribution, and Reconciliation in Europe and Israel After the Holocaust, edited by Laura Jockusch and Gabriel N. Finder (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015), 124.

11Ibid., 122.

12Philip Staal, Settling the Account, translated by Scott Rollins (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2015), 213.

13Otto Frank’s conversation with Friso Endt, city desk editor of Het Parool, which occurred sometime between 1947 and 1949, as reported to the Cold Case Team by Sytze van der Zee, who spoke to Endt in the early 1960s.

14Verdict published in Nieuw Isra?lietisch Weekblad [New Israelite Weekly], May 21, 1948.

15Vince Pankoke and Brendan Rook, interview with Esther Kizio, February 26, 2019.

16Nieuw Isra?lietisch Weekblad [New Israelite Weekly], November 3, 1950. Report regarding the funeral of Arnold van den Bergh.





Chapter 43: A Secret Well Kept


1Koos Groen, Een prooi wordt jager: De Zaak van de joodse verraadster Ans van Dijk (Meppel, Netherlands: Just Publishers, 2016), 142. See also Ans van Dijk, CABR, NI-HaNa, and Sytze van der Zee, Vogelvrij: De jacht op de joodse onderduiker (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2010), 361.

2Jeroen de Bruyn and Joop van Wijk, Anne Frank: The Untold Story: The Hidden Truth About Eli Vossen, the Youngest Helper of the Secret Annex (Laag-Soeren, Netherlands: Bep Voskuijl Productions, 2018), 241.

3The Contact Committee, an arm of the Jewish Council in Westerbork, was in charge of processing exemptions from deportation and keeping lists. In the spring of 1944, the commander of Westerbork, Albert Gemmeker, ordered the members of the Contact Committee to contact Jews in hiding in Amsterdam and elsewhere and offer them the possibility of buying their freedom with money and valuable jewelry. See Officer J. Schoenmaker, Assen, the Netherlands, Process Verbal (police report), No. 414, 6–7, Bureau oorlogsmisdrijven 58 (Office of War Crimes 58), June 4, 1948. The report is 117 pages long.

4On November 20, 1963, Otto spoke with the Het Vrije Volk newspaper and provided this statement. It appeared in Het Vrije Volk on November 22, 1963, under the title “De Oostenrijkse politieagent die Anne Frank arresteerde, bekent en legt uit: Ik heb zojuist orders uitgevoerd” [The Austrian Police Officer Who Arrested Anne Frank Confesses and Explains: I Just Executed Orders].

5Otto Frank, letter to Miep Gies, December 1, 1963, AFS.

6Eda Shapiro and Rick Kardonne, Victor Kugler: The Man Who Hid Anne Frank (Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House, 2004), was eventually published through the efforts of Eda Shapiro’s late husband, Irving Naftolin, and her coauthor, Rick Kardonne.





Epilogue: The Shadow City


1Carol Ann Lee, The Hidden Life of Otto Frank (New York: Harper Perennial, 2003), 314.

2Ibid., 294.

3Ibid., 292.

4This was Miep’s response to a student’s question. Scholastic published her replies to students’ questions on its website. See “Interview Transcript: Miep Gies,” Scholastic, http://teacher.scholastic.com/frank/tscripts/miep.htm.

5Jeroen de Bruyn and Joop van Wijk, Anne Frank: The Untold Story: The Hidden Truth About Eli Vossen, the Youngest Helper of the Secret Annex (Laag-Soeren, Netherlands: Bep Voskuijl Productions, 2018), 169. See also Wikipedia, s.v. “Bep Voskuijl,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bep_Voskuijl.

6Melissa Müller, Anne Frank: The Biography, translated by Rita and Robert Kimber (New York: Picador USA, 2013), 395.

7Eva Schloss with Karen Bartlett, After Auschwitz: A Story of Heartbreak and Survival by the Stepsister of Anne Frank (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2013), 270.

8Lee, The Hidden Life of Otto Frank, 227.

9Ibid., 274.

10Gerben Post, Lotty’s Bench: The Persecution of the Jews of Amsterdam Remembered, translated by Tom Leighton (Volendam, Netherlands: LM Publishers, 2018), 150. See also Bob Moore, Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands 1940–1945 (London: Arnold, 1997), 185–86.

11Post, Lotty’s Bench, 113–14.

12Ibid., 67.

13Ibid., 202.

14Ibid., 195.

15David Nasaw, The Last Million: Europe’s Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War (New York: Penguin, 2020).