The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation(85)

Just as complex were the team’s feelings about sharing their findings with the world. Everyone knew how powerful—and upsetting—their conclusions would be; they’re braced for the world’s reaction. The fact that a respected Dutch Jew had likely passed addresses to the SD, that someone not all that dissimilar from Otto Frank himself had been Otto’s betrayer . . . it is shocking. But they could not remain silent. As Rabbi Sebbag had told Thijs at the beginning of the investigation, the most important thing, the only real loyalty any of us should have, is to the truth.

Arnold van den Bergh was a person put into a devil’s dilemma by circumstances for which he was not to blame, and, under pressure, he may have failed to understand fully the consequences of his actions. He did not turn over information out of wickedness or for self-enrichment, as so many others had. Like Otto Frank’s, his goal was simple: to save his family. That he succeeded while Otto failed is a terrible fact of history.

By the summer of 1944, it was well known that extermination awaited people at the end of the transports. Could one imagine that for one’s children? Living in a state of constant dread of arrest and deportation, how does a person maintain moral equilibrium? A few can; most don’t. One can never be sure how one might act unless and until one finds oneself in the midst of such horror.

Arnold van den Bergh’s choices proved to be deadly. But he was not ultimately responsible for the deaths of the residents of Prinsengracht 263. That responsibility rests forever with the Nazi occupiers who terrorized and decimated a society, turning neighbor against neighbor. It is they who were culpable in the deaths of Anne Frank, Edith Frank, Margot Frank, Hermann van Pels, Auguste van Pels, Peter van Pels, and Fritz Pfeffer. And millions of others, in hiding or not.

And this can never be understood or forgiven.





Epilogue


The Shadow City


Otto Frank died on August 19, 1980, at the age of ninety-one. On his return from Auschwitz, he’d tried to rebuild his Opekta business, but neither pectin nor spices were available after the war. By the late 1940s, his time was entirely consumed by his daughter’s diary. After he moved to Switzerland in 1952, Johannes Kleiman assumed control of the firm.

Otto and his wife, Fritzi, were committed to answering all letters they received about the diary, and with the increasing international attention, the letters soon numbered in the thousands. Otto often traveled to Amsterdam to preside over the Anne Frank Foundation, established in 1957, and to direct the restoration of Prinsengracht 263, which opened as Anne Frank House in 1960.

On January 24, 1963, Otto and Fritzi set up the Anne Frank Fonds, a charitable foundation with offices in Basel, where they continued to reside. The copyright to Anne’s diary and all royalties from the book, the play, the film, and any radio and television presentations would devolve to the Anne Frank Fonds. To his relatives he left bequests and portions of the royalties, up to a certain amount, during their lifetimes. The rest went to the Fonds. However, wanting to ensure that the diaries would never be sold—who knew what would become of the Anne Frank Foundation in fifty years?—Otto willed the physical diaries to the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), knowing that the Dutch government would never sell them and they would be safe.1

Otto and Fritzi lived on the outskirts of Basel but often spent the summer months in Beckenried, on Lake Lucerne. Fritzi spoke about her years with Otto as “among the happiest of my whole life. . . . He had an innate sense of what it meant to be family.”2 Otto was close to Fritzi’s daughter, Eva, and Eva’s husband and three children. He and Fritzi spent three months of every year living with them in London.

There were many trips: to the United States and to Germany for events related to the diary. And many awards. On May 12, 1979, Otto celebrated his ninetieth birthday in London, and then, on June 12, he traveled to Amsterdam for the Anne Frank Fiftieth Birthday Tribute in the Westerkerk on Prinsengracht, after which he escorted the queen to the Anne Frank House for a private tour.

But age was catching up with him, and in his last year he suffered from lung cancer, though he would insist he was not sick, just tired. One of the last people to visit him before his death was Joseph Spronz, a friend and fellow survivor whom Otto had met in Auschwitz. Spronz’s wife described the visit:


When we arrived, Otto was in bed, but he heard us and got up, holding out his arms. He looked into my husband’s eyes, and they embraced. Otto murmured against my husband’s shoulder, “My dear friend Joseph.” He was so weak. The hospital staff arrived to collect him a few minutes later. We followed, and my husband was allowed into Otto’s room. They spoke of Auschwitz.3



Otto died that night.



Among the helpers, Miep Gies was always the closest to Otto. He lived with her and her husband for seven years after his return from the east. He always said he associated Amsterdam with friendship unto death, and by that he meant Miep Gies. Miep said that people often asked her what it was like to outlive almost everyone whose history she’d shared. She would respond that it was “strange.” “Why me?” she would ask. Why was she spared the concentration camp when Kugler and Kleiman were caught hiding Jews and it was clear that she’d been doing so, too?

After Otto moved to Basel, she and Jan visited him every year. When the film of her book Anne Frank Remembered was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1996, Miep went with the director, Jon Blair, to Hollywood. She became in effect the spokesperson for Anne’s diary after Otto’s death, saying: