The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation(33)

19


The Other Bookcase


From its very early days, the Cold Case Team managed to collect an enormous number of documents, photos, film material, interviews, and other pieces of information, but the information was scattered, uncategorized, and unfit for archiving. When Monique Koemans joined the team in October 2018, she determined that an electronic filing system was needed for the vast amount of information that had been gathered. She turned to an IT expert to set up a system capable of handling the volume and types of files and designed what came to be called “the Bookcase.”

By the end of the investigation, the Bookcase held more than 66 gigabytes of data in the form of more than 7,500 files. Every piece of information was filed under the name of a person of interest; the files included pictures, personal certificates, official documents, transcripts of interviews, the CABR files, scanned diaries, investigation reports, and eventually scenario folders and much more.

Each week Monique gathered the young researchers under her guidance at the evidence board. She’d established three panels: one to identify the research problem to be solved; one to name the individual to do the research; and one to post the job done. Once every two weeks they discussed whether newly gathered information should lead to changes in the scenarios/hypotheses. Monique’s style was collaborative. It wasn’t obvious, except in retrospect, how she posed tasks in such a way as to ensure the independence of each researcher. But in the end, the tasks were like puzzle pieces that eventually cohered to make a full picture.

Led by Vince and with all researchers present, every Monday there would be a plenary research session to discuss the progress of the previous week and the necessary follow-ups and tactics. Occasionally, different experts, such as investigative psychologist and offender-profiling expert Bram van der Meer, would visit, and thoughtful discussions would ensue.

The Amsterdam City Archives became one of the most important sources for research and was like a second home to the full-time researchers. The main archivist, Peter Kroesen, had worked there for twenty-five years and was often approached by people asking for his help in finding the betrayer of their relatives. Every time Vince or Pieter visited, there might be a new story; they were immensely valuable to the team because they gave a sense of the texture of life during the war.

Sometimes Kroesen was able to solve cases in short order, such as the case of the man who walked in one day wanting to know who had betrayed his parents. The man knew the address of their hiding place, so Kroesen simply checked who the official resident was at the time. It was a woman who had lived there with her nephew since the 1930s. Two months after the betrayal of the man’s parents, she moved to a bigger house—the house that had belonged to the people she betrayed. Meanwhile, the nephew changed his official address every two months, which was typical of collaborators who feared being tracked down by the resistance. Kroesen soon found the work records of the nephew. He’d been a student at the secret German spy school in Antwerp and had then worked for the SD as well as for the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ER), the Nazi organization dedicated to appropriating cultural property. It was not difficult for Kroesen to conclude that it must have been the nephew who betrayed the man’s parents, who had no idea that they were being hidden by the aunt of a dedicated Dutch Nazi.



Once the Cold Case Team’s office in the north of Amsterdam was set up, visitors started to come. Perhaps most important for Thijs was the visit of the Dutch military’s chief rabbi, Military Police Colonel Menachem Sebbag. Thijs had met him through the commander of the Royal Navy barracks when he had been searching for a new office. On that occasion they had established an immediate rapport.

Thijs wanted to know what it would mean if the team actually found the betrayer of Anne Frank. Did the rabbi worry that they would stir up emotions they’d be better off avoiding? What if the betrayer were Jewish? Should the matter be left alone?

Rabbi Sebbag was very clear. “Hardly anything is of greater importance than the truth,” he said. “If the betrayer turned out to be Jewish, so be it.” The rabbi reminded Thijs that the Nazis had tried to dehumanize the Jewish people. “The truth,” he said, “is that Jewish people are human at all levels. As humans can or will betray each other, then there will also be Jewish people among them.”

In the office, the Cold Case Team kept a thick binder containing copies of the Kopgeld receipts that Vince had found at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. Each of the 956 notes is forensic proof of payment of head money for the betrayal of one or more people. With bureaucratic precision, each is furnished with stamps, signatures, an amount in guilders, and the name of the recipient. Sometimes the names of the betrayed are mentioned, but other times only the number of betrayed men, women, and children is noted.

Rabbi Sebbag knew of the existence of Kopgeld but had never seen the receipts. When Thijs showed him the binder, he did not touch it. He stiffened. So many men, women, and children sentenced to death. Their absence was palpable in the profound sadness that filled the room.





20


The First Betrayal


Over the course of the investigation, various researchers worked on different scenarios and new information came in all the time. Vince saw the investigation as less chronological and more of an arc, which began with a betrayal far earlier than the 1944 call to the SD.