The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation(72)
At the top of the note was typed the German word Abschrift (copy). That would support the theory that it was the copy Otto had made. Otto’s native language was German, and it would have been natural for him to use the German word for “copy.” The remainder of the typewritten text was in Dutch. There was handwriting on the note, and Maarten identified it as his father’s. He agreed to lend the Cold Case Team the Abschrift note, as Vince came to call it, for forensic testing. Vince wanted to confirm that the note was typed by Otto Frank and that the handwriting was indeed Van Helden’s.
Vince decided to contact one of his former colleagues from the FBI laboratory, and together they worked through all available tests that might help extract the maximum information. Unfortunately, many of them would have destructive side effects, and Vince hesitated to conduct any test that could alter the note. Testing for fingerprints was a possibility, but because the dusting or cyanoacrylate (superglue) process can cause extreme discoloration, it was ruled out. He then turned to forensic expert Detective Carina van Leeuwen. Together they concluded that the examination of the note would require a two-pronged approach: a scientific examination and a linguistic analysis.
Not trusting the mail with such a potentially historic document, Maarten drove to Amsterdam with his sister and personally handed the note to Vince and Brendan. They were asked if they recognized the cursive handwriting on the note to be that of their father. Both agreed that it was.
For a scientific opinion, Vince contacted a Dutch handwriting expert, Wil Fagel, now retired from the Netherlands Forensic Institute. He asked them to obtain exemplars, copies of the detective’s handwriting, from Maarten, who still had several of his father’s handwritten letters. Fagel compared that handwriting to the Abschrift note and concluded that the handwriting on both was the same.1 (By coincidence, Fagel’s department at the Netherlands Forensic Institute examined Anne Frank’s diary for authentication of her handwriting in the mid-1980s. The results of the examination were published in the NIOD critical edition of the diary and refuted all claims that the diary was not written by Anne Frank.)2
It was essential to determine when the Abschrift note was written. Radiocarbon dating would probably determine how old the paper was, though not the writing on it, but it would require cutting off a piece of the note. Vince noticed that there were two punch holes on the left side of the note, one of which actually cut through a portion of the handwriting. He phoned Maarten van Helden, who explained that he’d punched holes in all the documents to store them in a binder. Vince wondered if the hole-punch device he’d used had a compartment to catch the punched-out rounds. Had Maarten ever emptied the compartment? No? Soon the office mail room delivered a bulging envelope. When it was opened, about a thousand punched-out rounds spilled out.
Vince and Brendan examined all of them on a retina screen. After several hours they were able to select fifteen possible matches on the basis of color but could not find any punched-out rounds with the ink handwriting, nor could they say definitively that any of them exactly fit the holes in the note.
Meanwhile, Vince and Brendan hoped that an examination of the note’s typeface might confirm its author and date. They contacted the international typeface expert Bernhard Haas, the son of the author of the Haas Atlas, the definitive guide to identifying typefaces. In typewriter terminology, document typeface describes the image left on paper after the striker bar has hit the ink ribbon. (In the age of computers and inkjet printers, typeface examination is a lost art, and the team was lucky to find Haas.) They briefed Haas on the investigation and informed him that they suspected the Abschrift note might have been produced by Otto Frank. Haas said that he would need either the typewriter Otto used or several original documents that Otto was known to have typed on his typewriter. The team did not hold out hope of obtaining Otto’s typewriter, since it was likely under the control of the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel, Switzerland, a group that had been unhelpful so far. The obvious solution was to turn to one of Otto’s regular correspondents.
As an American teenager in the late 1950s, Cara Wilson-Granat was so inspired by Anne Frank’s diary that she wrote to Otto Frank. She even auditioned to play Anne in the 1959 Academy Award–winning movie The Diary of Anne Frank by George Stevens, a role that was landed by Millie Perkins. Her correspondence with Otto and their friendship lasted more than two decades. In 2001, she published the letters in Dear Cara: Letters from Otto Frank.
Vince had previously spoken with Wilson-Granat about her correspondence and personal conversations with Otto and knew that she had kept his original letters. He phoned her and explained that the Cold Case Team had come into possession of a document that was possibly typed by Otto. Would she send a few of her letters so that they could be compared? She said she would, happily.
When Vince was inquiring about overnight shipping of the letters to the Amsterdam office, the shipper asked the value of the package’s contents. When he was told it was priceless, he answered, sorry, that was not one of the options. The CCT then consulted a document expert who suggested an estimated value, and the package was on its way. That night Vince spent the entire evening tracking the shipment, and the next morning he saw that it had arrived at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. His heart sank when at 8:15 a.m. he received a text that the shipment would be delayed until the next day, although the online tracking still showed that it would be delivered before 10:30 a.m. that day. He was in a bit of a panic, imagining having to call Cara to tell her that the letters had been lost or damaged. But at 9:00 a.m., the delivery truck showed up at the office, and the driver walked in and asked for a signature. Vince thought: If only he knew what was inside!