March 23, 2022, updated March 25, 2022

The canard of

The Betrayal of Anne Frank (4)

The dating of the

anonymous note

When was the anonymous note written? Translation misery. A sure-fire recipe for a total botch job. Fabrication as proof. The arrogance of the cold case team and Rosemary Sullivan. Better studies to read.

By Bart FM Droog

[this page is part of the Betrayal of Anne Frank. A 21^st Century Canard files]

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We previously reported that the entire investigation of the cold case team is based on unsubstantiated assumptions (see part 1 of this series). A phone call would have been made, the people in hiding would have been betrayed, Otto Frank would have received the anonymous note in 1945, Otto Frank would have known who the traitor was – none of this is based on concrete evidence.

In fact, the only concrete “proof” that the cold case team and therefore Rosemary Sullivan put forward is not even proof – and exactly that is easy to prove.

Everything revolves around an anonymous note in which notary Van den Bergh is accused of treason. On December 16, 1963, Otto Frank gave a copy (or rather, a copy made on a typewriter) to detective (and former resistance member) Arend van Helden, who was then responsible for the second police investigation into the arrests of the people in hiding in the Secret Annex, August 4, 1944.

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First notification of the note: March 31, 1958

The anonymous note was first mentioned on March 31, 1958, by Johannes Kleiman in a letter to Otto Frank, after Kleiman had read that note. Kleiman, who had been one of the helpers of the Secret Annex people during the war, asks Otto Frank why someone has come up with this accusation “only now”.

Late 1963 or early 1964 Van Helden wrote a few notes by hand on the copy of that anonymous note.



His hard-to-read handwriting (click to enlarge) has been deciphered by specialists from the Anne Frank House. In translation:

The original is in the possession of [?]

Notaris vd Hasselt Keizersgracht 702 (230047 234602)
Sent by post to [?] Basel, whether or not sent via foundation
anonymously,
was also typed.
For several years
Handed to me on 16/12-63

Mister Heldring

—-
1 Was a member of the Jewish Council.
2 a.o. dept. for nursery and care
2 dept Lijnbaansgracht (havertrnd (*) & emigration)

(* where 'havertrnd' stands for “hulp aan vertrekkenden” [aid to departees].

It thus appears from these notes that Otto Frank had been in possession of the anonymous note for “several years” in 1963. What does "several years", or in Dutch “meerdere jaren”, mean? This is usually used for a period of around five years. Think about multi-year plans (in Dutch: meerjarenplannen). Ergo: about five years before 1963 brings us to about 1958, the year in which that note is first mentioned.

Where did Otto Frank receive the note?

How and where did Otto Frank receive that note? By post, presumably – because of the “(?)” – in Basel, where Otto Frank lived from 1952. Possibly via the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, which was established on May 3, 1957.

How did Van Helden know this? Because Otto Frank told him so in 1963 – and therefore probably no longer knew exactly whether that anonymous note had been sent to him “several years” before, directly or via the foundation in Amsterdam. But because Frank left open the possibility that the note might have been sent to him via the foundation, this most likely means that it reached him after May 1957 (and thus before March 31, 1958, the date of Kleiman's letter). The date of that anonymous note can therefore be put to somewhere between the beginning of May 1957 and the end of March 1958.

The anonymous text itself also contains an indication of the date. The anonymous drafter had written: “Your hiding place in Amsterdam was communicated to the Jüdische Auswanderung (…) in those days” [italics by DM].

Now the Dutch word “toentertijd” ("in those days") is not used to denote recent events; usually it relates to events or circumstances from years ago (see, for example, what the site for all aspects of the Dutch language Onze Taal reports about that word, in this article). In other words, the anonymous writer claims that the betrayal had happened quite some time in the past – which makes it implausible that he or she had written this in 1945 about something that had taken place in 1944.

We do have a problem, though

This all seems to contradict with what investigator Van Helden wrote in his official report, compiled in December 1963 - March 1964: “During this investigation, Mr. Frank informed me that he had once, shortly after the liberation of our country, received an anonymous note concerning the betrayal.”

"Shortly after the liberation” can only mean the first post war years, so this would mean that he had received it in 1945-1950. But... Van Helden wrote this some time after he spoke with Otto Frank. So the possibility can't be ruled out that Van Helden remembered wrongly what Otto Frank had told him on December 2 and 3, 1963.

We tend to believe more in testimonies by reliable sources closest in time to the actual event than in other testimonies by reliable sources from later years. But belief is not science, of course.

Whatever might be the case: only forensic research of the original note, which might still exist somewhere in the archives of one of the two Anne Frank foundations, could possibly provide a final answer to the dating question.

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The interpretation of the notes by the cold case team

The cold case team and Rosemary Sullivan deciphered something completely different from the manuscript than the specialists of the Anne Frank House (click to enlarge):

This cold case team version immediately raises a number of questions: why do they think it more likely that the note was put away in “depot 23” (what is that?) than that it came into the possession of an existing notary, with ties to both Otto Frank like the Anne Frank House?

And how is it possible that they interpret the clearly decipherable and logical “Sent anonymously / Was also tapped” as the completely illogical “Personal details / Likely”?

Translation misery

And to make all this even more annoying: Marijke Gheeraert and Hans E. van Riemsdijk, the translators of the Dutch version of The Betrayal, did not bother to look at the original Dutch manuscript. They blindly translated the English misinterpretation, so that they ended up even further from the original text – and that is also a recurring shortcoming in the book: original Dutch and German texts have been translated into English for the non-Dutch and German-speaking writer Rosemary Sillything (and cold case team leader Vince Pankoke and the Australian cold case team member Brendan Rook), who released their fantasies on the texts supplied to them, and those fabrications were then translated back into Dutch. A sure-fire recipe for a total botch job.

Why insist on 1945?

Why, then, is it stated so firmly in The Betrayal of Anne Frank that the anonymous note dates from 1945? Simply because the English writer Carol Ann Lee had written in her book The hidden life of Otto Frank (2002): “Gringhuis [one of the Dutch agents who was involved in the arrest of the people in hiding in the Secret Annex] said that he had spoken to Otto Frank, who had received an anonymous note naming a member of the Jewish Council as their traitor.”

Lee doesn't mention her source for this. NIOD researchers David Barnouw and Gerrold van der Stroom, who thoroughly researched Lee's book in 2002-2003, concluded that much of what she claimed was based on "hearsay" from people who had not been eyewitnesses. Barnouw and Van der Stroom also noted: “In our opinion, Carol Ann Lee should have dealt with her sources more critically.” And they signaled that Lee had based some of her conclusions “on quicksand.”

Apart from Lee's book from 2002, there is nothing to be found that proves that Otto Frank spoke to Gringhuis in prison. Lee knew of the existence of the anonymous note when writing her book through archival research. She then either invented the meeting and the conversation with Otto Frank – Gezinus Gringhuis or based it on untraceable gossip – not to accuse the notary, but to accuse someone else, Tonny Ahlers, of the betrayal.

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Fabrication as proof

Twenty years later, the cold case team and Rosemary Sullivan have used those fabrications as "evidence" in their claim that the anonymous note was written in 1945. But that's not all they made up: in note 7 to chapter 38 of The betrayal of Anne Frank it says:

“The source of this confrontation between Otto and Gringhuis is Carol Ann Lee, The Hidden Life of Otto Frank (New York, Harper Perennial, 2003), 219. Lee mentioned the conversation, as did David Barnouw and Gerrold van der Stroom in their investigation , “Who betrayed Anne Frank?” Though they were confident in the assertion and suggested that the conversation would be in the Silberbauer Doc. 1 file, a thorough search could not locate the source of the information. However, all three attest to its authenticity. We assume that the file was lost, removed or misfiled.”

Neither in Lee's book nor in Barnouw and Van der Stroom's research is there anything to support this. Lee does not indicate a specific source. Barnouw and Van der Stroom only refer to Lee, and say or suggest absolutely nothing about that Silberbauer document.

But there is more: Sullivan writes in chapter 27 of The Betrayal of Anne Frank: “Otto made a second visit to the prison to interview Gezinus Gringhuis. He made a notation [this must be: note - DM]  to that effect in his agenda [this must be: diary - DM]  on December 6, 1945, along with the name Ab.”

It has already been convincingly argued in De Groene Amsterdam-mer magazine that in Otto Frank's diary on that day 'POD!' (for Political Investigation Service) is written and that there is no "Ab", but "ab Distribution" in it. That has nothing to do with a visit to a prison.

This is also clear from a letter that Otto Frank sends to his mother on 11 December 1945. In it he writes that he was at the police station a day earlier to view photos of the possible perpetrators of the arrest. He had recognized two men. Both were imprisoned and, Otto Frank wrote, he intended to confront them.

In other words: it was only on 10 December 1945 that he identified the Dutch police officers Gezinus Gringhuis and Willem Grootendorst. It is obvious that the story about the Otto Frank-Gringhuis meeting on 6 December 1945 is a fabrication. A new concoction, based on a rumor made public by Carol Ann Lee twenty years ago.

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Finally – about the anonymous note and the arrogance of the cold case team.

Several experienced Dutch researchers and those directly involved have already referred the anonymous note to the wastepaper basket in 1958-1964. After investigation, nothing at all had emerged to substantiate the accusation against the notary. Were the researchers at the time too gullible?

David Barnouw emphasizes in 2022 that the RIOD employees and police detectives who investigated war crimes in 1963/1964 knew the statements of the individual criminals, knew when they had told lies, knew which individual statements were relevant for multiple files. They also realized that there were numerous unverifiable allegations against members of the former Jewish Council. They were very good at assessing what was credible and what was not. Based on their expertise and experience, the anonymous note was therefore set aside as “no proof”.

Also in later serious investigations (2003 and 2016) no importance was attached to that note. And rightfully so.

But why then have all these previous findings been ignored by the cold case team and Rosemary Sullivan? Because acknowledging that there is no evidence for their theory is tantamount to admitting that they have cheated everyone. Because they've come this far (with 650,000 euros in advances alone and a boatload of royalties on the horizon), and the US and Canadian media largely continue to go along with the deception, Sullivan and the cold case team can counter the criticism with misleading statements, threats and insults.

Threats and insults?

Yep. Vincent Pankoke wrote on the site of the cold case team, on February 9, 2022:

"In 2017, when our investigation was first announced to the public, several of [the present critics] actually provided comments which appeared in press articles regarding their role in the investigation, indicating that the investigation was such an impressive and important endeavor. My message to these individuals is that they should consider retracting their claims since we have preserved every email and documented every meeting, including any records that they provided to the team.”

And on February 23, 2022, Rosemary Sullivan accused the critics of jealousy and using Hitler's methods. Need we say more?

Better reading

Instead of buying and reading the pulp fiction concocted by the cold case team and Rosemary Sullivan, it is better to read these solid and free accessible reports:

David Barnouw and Gerrold van der Stroom. Who betrayed Anne Frank? NIOD, Amsterdam, 2003 (English version / Dutch version).

Gertjan Broek. An Investigative report on the betrayal and arrest of those in hiding in the Secret Annex. Anne Frank House /Anne Frank Stichting, Amsterdam, 2016 (English version / Dutch version).

This article was co-facilitated by Steunfonds Freelance Journalisten.

This article is largely a translation of 'De datering van het anonieme briefj. De canard van 'Het verraaad van Anne Frank'e. De Tweede Wereldoorlog als industrie (3-IV)', Reporters Online, Haarlem, February 17, 2022.
Translation: Droog Magazine, with special thanks to W.M. Groenewegen.

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