The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation(64)

Of course, it’s possible that the Weiszes were never assigned to Barrack 85 and someone else mailed the second letter on Richard Weisz’s behalf. Somehow, though, the Weiszes managed to change their penal status. The Cold Case Team knew that “penal” prisoners could change their status for a significant fee (one survivor of Westerbork had paid a fee of 80,000 guilders, the equivalent of $545,000 today). The Weiszes, however, did not seem to have that kind of money, which suggests that they might have paid with a different currency: information.

In handwriting on the Weiszes’ identity cards, the date of their deportation is noted along with the added information “Normal case.” Despite having “normal” and not “penal” status, on September 3, 1944, the Weiszes were deported to Auschwitz on the same transport as Anne Frank and her family. Both died in the Eastern European camps. It is not known if they were together or separated and exactly when they perished.16





LEOPOLD DE JONG


Leopold de Jong’s presence in Westerbork is a long story with a curious history. It starts with the man who arrested Van Hoeve and the Weiszes: Pieter Schaap.

Pieter Schaap was the Dutch agent of the SD who led the raid on Van Hoeve’s grocery shop on Leliegracht, around the corner from the secret Annex. He was also the handler of the V-Frau Ans van Dijk and the man behind the betrayal and arrest of Erich Geiringer, the first husband of Fritzi Geiringer, Otto Frank’s second wife. According to his boss, Abraham Kaper, desk sergeant at the Bureau of Jewish Affairs, Schaap was one of the men who brought in the most Jews. “And I should know,” he added, “since I was the one paying them.”17

Schaap was best known for his modus operandi: pressuring Jewish people to act as V-Men and V-Women. After a raid, he would focus on a Jewish prisoner and threaten to send him or her and family to the camps or worse. Then he offered an out if he or she would work for him as an informant. Among his most infamous informants was Leopold de Jong. In the case of De Jong, Schaap had a double advantage: he exploited not only De Jong as a V-Man but also De Jong’s wife, Frieda Pleij.18

In the early days of the occupation, De Jong (who was Jewish) and Pleij (who was not) had people in hiding in their house in Heemstede. They were both known to have lovers. De Jong had relationships with some of the Jewish girls and young women who were in hiding at their home (some of whose families he later betrayed), and Pleij was involved with a man named Herman Mol, who guarded her house when she was in prison after the war. That she also had a relationship with Pieter Schaap was common knowledge at the SD.19 Pleij said she had been with him only out of fear; he said that she had been his Friedl and he had wanted to marry her, even though he was already married.20

Pleij later claimed that she had delivered food coupons for the resistance. Her CABR file confirms that she received food stamps through a middleman who had connections with the resistance. Evidently, she then sold the food stamps on the black market.

In searching through Pleij’s CABR files, Cold Case Team researcher Christine Hoste discovered a bank statement indicating a large deposit of 4,110.10 guilders (the equivalent of $28,000 today) made on August 5, 1944—one day after the raid on the Annex. Such a large sum; such a suspicious date! How to account for it? Had Pieter Schaap taken part in the raid and this was money he’d stolen from the Annex and passed to his lover, Pleij, to deposit? For Christine it was a eureka moment. But further examination of bank records made it clear that Pleij received such payments on a regular basis.21 Selling food stamps on the black market was obviously a lucrative scam.

In the summer of 1944, Leopold de Jong began to panic. It seemed to him that too many people knew about his connection to Schaap through his wife and might suspect him of being a Jewish informant. Schaap ordered de Jong to go to Westerbork, where he could act as a cell spy, or prison informant.22 De Jong entered Westerbork on July 1.23 On the transport list, it is stated that his status as a Jew was still under investigation, which of course was a subterfuge.24 He was assigned to the Barneveld Barrack. Camp records indicate that on one occasion he requested to go to the town of Groningen to help Pieter Schaap track down a resistance leader named Schalken.

The team couldn’t ignore the obvious question: Did Leopold de Jong, in his role as prison informant, somehow learn from the Weiszes about Jews in hiding at Prinsengracht 263?

Whether or not the Weiszes knew about the secret Annex, it’s clear that the greengrocer Hendrik van Hoeve knew; he was the one who commented to Jan Gies, after the warehouse break-in in April 1944, that he’d thought better of contacting the police.25 But Richard Weisz had been a greengrocer before he went into hiding. It could very well be that he helped Van Hoeve with the preparation of deliveries before he made his rounds and thus learned that Prinsengracht 263 was one of the addresses on the list.

Van Hoeve said his grocery store had acted like a doorganghuis (transit house) for people in hiding. There might have been an opportunity to hear rumors of onderduikers in the secret Annex. In that environment, with so many pressures and fears, people slipped and traded information without always realizing it.

Any information sharing could have come about by accident if, say, the Weiszes, who had managed to lose their penal status, met Leopold de Jong in Barrack 85 or elsewhere. They had no reason to suspect he was a V-Man. Like them, he was Jewish; they probably thought they could trust him. As a V-Man he would have cultivated their trust, much the same way Ans van Dijk did with hiders. Perhaps they shared their suspicion that there were Jews in hiding in the Annex. Thinking they were celebrating the Franks’ ingenuity in staying hidden, they might have bragged about them. De Jong would, of course, have tipped off Schaap.