A Dutch publisher has suspended the printing of a book that suggested a Jewish notary betrayed Anne Frank after Holocaust researchers criticized it for being "full of errors."
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The book was written by Canadian biographer Rosemary Sullivan and is the result of a six-year cold case investigation into the mystery of how the Nazis found the hiding place of the famous diarist in 1944.
The English translation of the book – The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation – was released on Jan. 18 and caused a sensation when it said investigators named Arnold van den Bergh as the main suspect, saying he betrayed Frank and her family to the Nazis in order to save his own.
The publisher of the Dutch-language edition, Ambo Anthos, said in an internal email sent after the criticism that it should have taken a more "critical stance" on the publication.
"We await the answers from the researchers to the questions that have emerged and are delaying the decision to print another run," the email from the Amsterdam firm said. "We offer our sincere apologies to anyone who might feel offended by the book."
It did not go into details on the questions and the firm declined to comment further when contacted by Reuters. There was no immediate response to requests for comment from Sullivan's representatives or from the book's English-language publisher, HarperCollins.
One of the investigators quoted in the book, Pieter van Twisk, told Reuters he had seen the email and the research team was "completely surprised" by its message.
"We had a meeting last week with the editors and talked about the criticism and why we felt it could be deflected and agreed we would come with a detailed reaction later," he said.
Frank, her family members, and several other Jews were discovered by the Nazis on Aug. 4, 1944, after hiding for nearly two years in a secret annex above a canal-side warehouse in Amsterdam. All were deported and Frank died in the Bergen Belsen camp at age 15. Her father, Otto Frank, was the only family member to survive the war.
The diary Frank wrote while in hiding has become one of the most well-known books detailing Jewish life during the Holocaust and has been translated into over 60 languages.
Among those questioning the research are the foundation set up by Frank's father, and historian Erik Somers of the Dutch NIOD institute for war, Holocaust, and genocide studies.
Contrary to the Dutch publisher, HarperCollins has not recalled the book.
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