The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation(63)
After six weeks in prison in Amsterdam, Van Hoeve was sent to Camp Vught. Set up in 1942 in the south of the Netherlands by Reich Commissioner Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Vught was the only concentration camp run directly by the SS in Western Europe outside Germany.6 It was a terrifying place. Surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers, the camp had its own gallows, an execution grounds in the nearby woods, and a mobile crematory oven to dispose of the dead.
By that time in the Netherlands, it was generally understood that those who had the courage to save Jews, if discovered, usually ended up in such places.
During the war Amsterdam was a small world in which lives and fates crossed relentlessly. Nothing illustrated that more than the web of interrelationships among the people connected to the greengrocer and to the Annex. There were a number of potential suspects in Van Hoeve’s inner circle who might have passed along information about the hiders.
MAX MEILER
Max Meiler was the contact person who placed the Weiszes in hiding at the Van Hoeves’. He was deeply anti-Nazi and as early as Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938, used his brother’s summerhouse close to Venlo, near the German border, to shelter Jewish refugees.7
From the beginning of the war, Meiler falsified identity cards (Persoonsbewijzen, or PBs) and ration cards and was soon helping Jewish people find hiding places. As of 1942, he regularly traveled to Venlo carrying the underground newspaper Vrij Nederland and photos of the royal family, which in itself was an act of resistance.8
On May 17, 1944, eight days before Van Hoeve’s home and shop were raided, Meiler was arrested on the train between Utrecht and Rotterdam. He was carrying false identity papers.
In his memoir about the war, now housed at the Anne Frank Stichting, Van Hoeve described how he had encountered Meiler in Camp Vught in mid-July. Meiler was shocked to run into Van Hoeve and pleaded with him not to call him by his real name.9 He was using an alias to hide his Jewish identity. They met again at the Heinkel factories near Berlin at the end of September or early October. Once a large, handsome man, Meiler now looked totally broken.10 All he told Van Hoeve was that the SS had found out that he was a Jew. He died in Neuengamme concentration camp in northern Germany on March 12, 1945.
Is it possible that Meiler broke under interrogation, perhaps at Camp Vught? It’s surely conceivable that Van Hoeve told him about Prinsengracht 263. They were both engaged in resistance work; Meiler may have seen Van Hoeve’s delivery lists or even been involved in determining the addresses. Could Meiler have revealed the Annex address to the SS? The team thought that was a working hypothesis until they discovered that the timing was off.
Van Hoeve was arrested on May 25 and sent to Amstelveenseweg prison for six weeks before being transferred to Camp Vught around mid-July. When he met Meiler in Camp Vught, Meiler was still passing as an Aryan and would have had no need to hand over names to the SS. But something must have happened to him on August 12, since there is a record of his admission to the camp hospital.11 Perhaps he was beaten by a kapo and that was when his Jewish identity was discovered. However, the raid on the Annex had occurred eight days before his hospitalization, meaning that it’s unlikely that he was beaten into revealing the Prinsengracht 263 address.
RICHARD AND RUTH WEISZ
After their arrest on May 25, 1944, the Weiszes were transported to Westerbork transit camp. Jews who’d been arrested in hiding were considered criminals, were assigned to Barrack 67, the penal barrack, and carried an S (penal case) on their identification card.12 It was the lowest designation possible, meaning that the prisoner must undertake forced labor and would be transported to the east sooner than later. Inmates did everything they could to lose their S status, hoping it would save them from deportation.
Pieter and Monique visited Camp Westerbork in the north of the Netherlands on October 10, 2018; it’s now a memorial museum. Guido Abuys, the head curator of the camp archives, offered to help them in their search for information about the Weiszes. Abuys went into the archives and was gone for some time. When he returned, he looked puzzled. He was carrying the Weiszes’ camp ID cards, which showed something quite rare. The barrack number on the cards looked as if it had been tampered with: the “67” (the penal barrack) had been changed to “87” (the hospital barrack). More significantly, somehow (it is not clear how), between June 11 and June 29, Richard and Ruth Weisz had managed to have the S removed from their camp cards. That meant that they had lost their “penal” status and would thereafter be designated as “normal” prisoners, which had brought about a dramatic change in their circumstances.13
Adding to the puzzle, Richard Weisz sent two letters to the greengrocer’s wife, Mrs. Van Hoeve, requesting that she send clean sheets and clothes. The first letter is stamped “Barrack 67,” the second “Barrack 85.” Did that mean they were relocated to Barrack 85?14
To make that move, the Weiszes would have to have done something extraordinary. Or perhaps someone with influence had interceded on their behalf. Barrack 85, known as the Barneveld Barrack, was the most elite barrack in Westerbork. It was assigned to a privileged group of high-ranking, mostly upper-and middle-class, Dutch Jews considered invaluable to the state, whose status was such that they could not be deported to the east. They were initially housed in a castle near the town of Barneveld in the eastern Netherlands, but on September 29, 1943, they were all deported to Camp Westerbork. Even there they retained some of their privileges.15