![]() Otto Frank had hired trusted employees to help him build a secret annex that spanned three stories in the Opekta Works warehouse. ![]() On July 6, 1942, her family moved into their hiding place. Anne Frank was forced to attend an exclusively Jewish school in 1941, and for her next birthday, she received an autograph book she decided to use as her diary. When Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, however, the local persecution of Jews began. Otto Frank even started a second company in 1938, a wholesaler of herbs called Pectacon. For a few short years prior, the children happily attended school. It was at the Opekta Works warehouse at Prinsengracht 263 where Otto Frank sold the fruit extract pectin that the family would hide in fear for their lives. The following year, Otto Frank moved his family to Amsterdam to start a business. Adolf Hitler would be elected as Chancellor of the Reich in 1933. “When van den Bergh lost all his series of protections exempting him from having to go to the camps, he had to provide something valuable to the Nazis that he’s had contact with to let him and his wife at that time stay safe.” How Did Anne Frank Get Found?īorn on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt, Germany, Anne Frank lived only a few short years before German fervor against “inferior people” such as Jews reached a fever pitch. “There’s no evidence to indicate that he knew who was hiding at any of these addresses,” Pankoke said. Ultimately, van den Bergh was a Jewish Council member who allegedly knew the local hiding places - and he traded those addresses with the Nazis to protect his own family. The researchers combed countless primary records and investigated over 30 suspects in 20 different scenarios to arrive at their conclusion. Led by retired FBI Agent Vince Pankoke, it involved psychologists, historians, archivists, war crimes investigators, and criminologists - and pointed to a Jewish notary named Arnold van den Bergh. Now, a six-year investigation has pinpointed the man who most likely betrayed Anne Frank. Ever since her journal The Diary of a Young Girl was published in 1947, historians have wondered: Who betrayed Anne Frank? The precocious young Jewish girl spent two years in hiding before they discovered the secret Amsterdam attic in 1944. Sean Gallup/Getty Images A symbolic tombstone at the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lohheide, Germany, where Anne Frank and her sister died of typhus in 1945.Īnne Frank was 10 years old when the Nazis invaded Holland.
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