The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation(34)
By the end of 1934, business at Opekta was picking up, and Otto rented larger offices at Singel 400. As is often the case with fledgling businesses, he found himself performing many roles, including salesman visiting housewives and wholesalers across the country. Business again improved in 1935 after Otto convinced a number of small wholesalers to stock pectin. He was finally able to employ more staff and hired a secretary, Isadora “Isa” Monas, and at least two product demonstrators.
One was a woman named Jetje Jansen-Bremer, whose job it was to attend various trade shows and explain the use of pectin. At the same time, Otto gave part-time jobs to Jetje’s husband, Josephus Marinue “Job” Jansen, and their eldest son, Martinus. Job built the wooden display cases, and Martinus helped with packaging and dispatch duties at the warehouse.
After the war Job Jansen was accused of collaboration. The Cold Case Team was able to obtain his profile from the police investigative report on him included in his CABR files at NIOD. There was also material on him in the Dutch National Archives. It seems that the man had a fraught past. Brought up in a strictly Catholic household, he’d joined the seminary of the Brothers of the Immaculate Conception of Mary (Broeders van de Onbevlekte Ontvangenis van Maria), intending to become a priest. Having failed at that, he married at age twenty and worked in theater: in administration, in advertising, and occasionally onstage. After eight and a half years his marriage disintegrated, and his wife and two children left him. Unable to cope, he attempted suicide, shooting himself in the lung. During his recuperation he met Jetje Bremer, who worked at the Dutch Theater (Hollandsche Schouwburg); they married and had six children. By 1935, Jansen was no longer able to support his family through the theater, and Jetje opened a florist shop in Amsterdam and also went to work part-time for Otto.
It seems that Jetje’s financial independence galled her husband, and the marriage deteriorated. In his paranoia and sense of impotence, Jansen soon came to believe his wife was having an affair with her boss. (He would later apologize for “implicating” Mr. Frank in adultery and “tarnishing” his name.)1 The tension caused Otto to cut all ties with the Jansens.
When the Germans invaded, Jansen immediately rejoined the by then ruthlessly anti-Semitic Dutch Nazi Party, to which he had belonged in the mid-thirties. That made life unendurable for his wife, who was Jewish. Eventually Job left Jetje to live with a widow who was a like-minded NSB sympathizer.
Job Jansen was almost a blueprint of a rank-and-file member of the NSB. When Vince asked Dr. Roger Depue, the forensic behavioral scientist who often advised the Cold Case Team, to look at the biographical material they’d collected on Jansen, he said it was clear that belonging to the National Socialist Movement gave Jansen a sense of authority and access to power. In truth he was only a common bully, taking out his frustrations on his fellow citizens, especially the group that was deemed the scapegoat.
An anecdote in Jansen’s file makes this clear. At the funeral procession for the NSB member Hendrik Koot, who’d died in the violent confrontation between Dutch Nazis and young Jews in February 1941, Jansen and a fellow NSB member, Martinus J. Martinus, accosted a Jewish man for passing through the parade barriers and crossing the street. They marched Isidore Rudelsheim into a nearby police station, saying that the Jew had been disrespecting the procession, even though the procession had not yet begun, and demanding that he be locked up.
In March 1941, Jansen and Otto bumped into each other on the Rokin, a busy street in downtown Amsterdam. Though he did not like the man, as a courtesy Otto stopped for a short conversation. With leering condescension, Jansen asked if, being a Jew, Otto was still able to get goods from Germany. Otto replied that he had no difficulty doing so. Jansen then said, “The war will be over soon.” Otto replied that he wasn’t convinced and said that the Germans were still having a tough time of it. Such a comment, implying that the Germans could lose the war, at that time and place was treasonous.
A few weeks later, on April 18, 1941, a young man paid an unexpected visit to Opekta and asked to see Otto Frank. When he was ushered into Otto’s office, he introduced himself as a courier between the NSB and the German SD and asked Otto if he knew a man named Jansen. Slowly the courier removed a letter from his pocket and handed it to Otto. The letter was addressed to the NSB.
Otto looked at the signature: Job Jansen, Member 29992. The letter was a denunciation of Otto for “publicly insulting the Wehrmacht” and “attempting to influence him.” Jansen requested that the SS be informed and that the Jew Frank be arrested. Otto immediately understood that Jansen was reporting him for his remarks about the German Army during their brief encounter on the Rokin. The very appreciative Otto gave the young man the cash he had in his pocket, a mere 20 guilders, to thank him for intercepting the letter. At the time, he was convinced that the young man had saved his life.2
Otto later told the police that he’d let Miep read the letter and then had given the original to his lawyer for review. After taking a few notes, his lawyer destroyed it, with Otto’s permission, since it was deemed too dangerous to keep.3
After the war and when searching for the person responsible for the raid on the Annex, Otto didn’t forget about his former disloyal employee. It was unusual for Otto to react as he did, but on August 21, 1945, he wrote a scathing letter to the authorities in Amsterdam to inquire if they had Jansen in custody. He claimed that the man had committed treacherous acts against him. He was careful to insist that Jansen’s wife, who was Jewish, had in no way been involved but said she might be able to help them find him if he was not yet in jail.4 Perhaps it was Jansen’s disloyalty that cut Otto so deeply. He’d helped the man and his family by employing them in a time of great economic distress, and the man had betrayed him. Had Jansen’s letter reached the SD on Euterpestraat, Otto would certainly have been arrested and, at the least, been sent to a concentration camp.