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  February 8, 2022

The Betrayal of Anne Frank

"The book combines hundreds of

  factual errors"


The book The Betrayal of Anne Frank caused an uproar around the world. Yves Kugelmann from the Anne Frank Fund in Basel explains why he rejects the thesis that a Jewish notary public revealed the Frank family's hiding place.

By Sven Felix Kellerhoff, Senior Editor History of Welt


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


Accompanied by a marketing campaign, the book The Betrayal of Anne Frank by Canadian author Rosemary Sullivan was launched on January 17, 2022. Since then, the thesis put forward in it has caused a stir that the Dutch notary Arnold van den Bergh, who himself had to work in the Amsterdam “Judenrat” (Jewish Council), betrayed the Frank family’s hiding place at Prinsengracht 263 to the Gestapo in 1944. The publisher of the Dutch translation, Ambo Anthos, has now distanced itself from the book, the German edition is "internally reviewed" by Harper-Collins; it is currently unclear whether it will appear at the end of March 2022 as planned.

Yves Kugelmann was informed about the project early on. The Swiss journalist is an honorary member of the Anne Frank Fund in Basel, which Anne's father Otto - he was the only one in the family to survive the Holocaust - established and appointed as a universal heir. The fund holds the copyrights to the diaries and publishes these.


Welt: Mr. Kugelmann, when and how did you find out about the project that has now become known to the public in the form of the book The Betrayal of Anne Frank and the associated marketing campaign?

Kugelmann: Part of the team was in Basel around five years ago. The question was whether the Anne Frank Fund Basel would be willing to cooperate and open the archives of the families and the fund.

Welt: What bothered you about the term "cold case diary", which the initiators of the project had chosen as the working title?

Kugelmann: What bothered us was the lack of expertise at all levels, the construction and the announcement that the case would be solved. It was too early for terminology at the time. "Less a mystery unsolved, than a secret well kept" is written on the cover today and combines the brilliant nonsense in the book in one sentence: an unproven suspicion becomes a fact.

Welt: The Anne Frank Fund has declined to support the project. Why?

Kugelmann: The Anne Frank Fund supports investigations, research and police enquiries. The team couldn't deliver any of this. A private company with no academic or other adequate connection. It's not enough for a former FBI agent to try to operate new computer software with a team of non-experts. Such amateurish work would have been rejected by any FBI panel or court.

Welt: What do you think of the result of this project that has now become known?

Kugelmann: What should I think of an accusation without proof? Nothing. It fundamentally contradicts our understanding of the rule of law. The suspicion convicts no perpetrators, only the evidence. And that is totally missing. In our world, there is a presumption of innocence. The team executed a Jew here, stigmatizing a large part of the Jewish community.

Welt: Your criticism is not only aimed at the thesis that the notary Arnold van den Bergh betrayed the eight people hidden in the Secret Annex …

Kugelmann:... Experts around the world support our criticism – without exception. Historians, specialist journalists and scientists have torn the results up in thin air and accused the cold case team of charlatanism. The book is fundamentally wrong and accumulates hundreds of factual errors. And all of the team's long-standing consultants flee, negating the cooperation.

Welt: How do you assess the effects of the publication of The Betrayal of Anne Frank?

Kugelmann: It shows the dangerous dynamics of unreflective reporting in connection with the digital high-speed information world. Within seconds, a conspiratorial thesis went around the world, and the headline “Jew betrayed Anne Frank” was established as fact. Mostly without a question mark. Even if the evidence had been watertight, it should have been: "Dutchman betrayed residents of the Secret Annex." Now the big clean-up begins.



© Sven Felix Kellerhoff / Welt, 2022, by courtesy of Axel Springer SE Berlin.
Original German version: “Das Buch vereint Hunberte von faktischen Fehlern”. Welt, Berlin, 08-02-2022.
 https://www.welt.de/geschichte/article236751335/Streit-um-Anne-Frank-Das-Buch-ist-im-Grundsatz-falsch.html
© Translation: Droog Magazine, 2022.