A former FBI agent has claimed to have uncovered the identity of the person who betrayed Anne Frank.
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As the German military occupied the Netherlands in World War II, the Franks hid in the attic of the office of Anne Frank's father, Otto, in Amsterdam. They were eventually discovered and sent to concentration camps, where 15-year-old Anne, her elder sister, and her mother died – among an estimated 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis.
Otto Frank was the only family member to survive, living to see the Soviet army liberate the notorious Auschwitz camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1945. He had his daughter's diary published two years later and dedicated himself to speaking about the atrocities of the Holocaust.
In an interview with the CBS News program "60 Minutes," former FBI special agent Vince Pankoke said, "The team and I sat down, and we compiled a list of ways in which the annex could have been compromised. You know, was it carelessness of the people occupying the annex maybe making too much noise or being seen in the windows? You know, was it betrayal?"
The team looked at Dutch records as well as arrest records from the time.
"The Nazis were hellbent on ridding the Netherlands of all Jews, part of the Final Solution. By 1942, the Franks were among some 25,000 Jews in hiding across the country. The Nazis were coldly skilled at getting people to talk," he said.
Pankoke eventually became suspicious of Arnold van den Bergh, a prominent Jewish businessman and member of the Nazis' Jewish Council, whose family was never sent to the concentration camps.
According to Pankoke, Otto Frank, Anna's father, had told detectives in 1963 that he had received a note identifying the man who betrayed his family as van der Bergh. Pankoke was able to track down the son of a detective that had investigated the case to corroborate a member of the Jewish Council had been turning over lists of places where Jews had been in hiding.
Asked why Otto Frank would have kept the man's identity a secret, Pankoke surmised, "He knew that Arnold van den Bergh was Jewish, and in this period after the war, antisemitism was still around. So perhaps he just felt that if I bring this up again, with Arnold van den Bergh being Jewish, it'll only stoke the fires further."
"There's no evidence to indicate that he knew who was hiding at any of these addresses," explained Pankoke. "They were just addresses that were provided where Jews were known to have been in hiding."
Still, Pankoke noted, "we have to keep in mind that the fact that he was Jewish just meant he was placed into an untenable position by the Nazis to do something to save his life."
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