Time.news – Evidence dissolved in the fog: the Dutch publisher of the book in which the identity of Anne Frank’s alleged “traitor” was revealed – in practice, the man who allegedly revealed his family’s hiding place in Amsterdam to the Nazis, thus allowing their arrest and deportation – announced the withdrawal of the volume, complete with an apology.
According to what both the BBC and Zeit write, in a note the publisher Ambo / Anthos affirms that the decision to remove from the shelves the book “The betrayal of Anne Frank – An investigation” signed by the Canadian writer Rosemary Sullivan has been taken following “the new conclusions of the historical research carried out” and asks the libraries to proceed quickly with the returns.
More, Ambo / Anthos “returns to apologize to all those who feel hurt by the contents of the book”.
It is in the hiding place where she had found refuge from 1942 to 1944 with her family and four other people that Anne Frank wrote the “Diary” which transformed her into one of the most powerful symbols of the Holocaust.
After the discovery of the hiding place in a back house on the Prinsengracht, various members of the Frank family were deported to various concentration camps.
78 years later, it is still unknown who tipped off the Nazis about the hiding place, decreeing their terrible fate.
Well, last January the thesis of Rosemary Sullivan, according to whom he was a notary in Amsterdam – that Arnold van den Bergh – to reveal to the Nazi occupiers the existence of Anne Frank’s hideout.
The motive, so to speak, would have been to protect himself and his family from possible deportation.
The notary was a member of the Jewish Council of the Dutch capital. According to Sullivan, his discovery is based on research conducted for over five years together with a former FBI agent, Vince Pankoke, according to whom the probability of having come to the truth was “85%”.
Faced with the controversy that broke out immediately after the book, the two defended themselves by affirming that “it was just a theory”.
Indeed, several historians had immediately expressed considerable doubts about the consistency of the evidence presented in the book. Curiously, according to the BBC, even the new historical research that has now led to the book’s withdrawal was allegedly conducted by a former FBI employee.
The accusation is heavy: “There is no serious evidence” to argue that notary van den Bergh was the “traitor” who would reveal the Frank family’s hiding place to the Nazis.
In general, searches for the book are referred to as “amateur”.
Harsh words also came from van den Bergh’s granddaughter, Mirjiam de Gorter, who also asked to withdraw from the market the English version of the book, published in the United States by Harper Collins: “With this story they tried to exploit the story of Anna Frank falsifying history and causing enormous injustice. ”