Yesterday, Natasha Gerson published a critical analysis of the coldcase-research. On page 47 of this report, she refers to me and my blog. Her text is in English. My blog isn't. This is why I decided to add a summary of it (the Anne Frank part of it, that is) in English. Dutch readers are invited to read my blogs of 2022 below and almost smell my astonishment.
My background: I am a sociologist, who has studied WWII in Amsterdam in detail.
Last January, the 'Betrayal of Anne Frank', written by Rosemary Sullivan, was being published. Listening to this news, I could not believe my ears: the researchers suspected notary Arnold van den Bergh. But the man was in hiding, as Petra Van den Boomgaard had mentioned in her dissertation.
I ordered the book and could not believe my eyes: I simply saw so many mistakes in it.
Having studied tens of thousands of entries (the endless lists of stolen bikes included) in the course of my own research concerning 'daily life in Amsterdam during the war, 1940-1943', for which I (among other sources) had studied the daily reports of the Amsterdam police, I decided to focus on them.
I started my research with the woman, who on the eve of the raid in the secret annex, had been taken in by the police: she had violated the curfew. Could she have betrayed Anne Frank, and the seven other people in the secret annex, the rearchers wondered? A good question.
The woman had been arrested on the third of August 1944, literally on the eve of the raid in the secret annex. And the researchers could not understand why she was sent home that exact same evening. Wasn't she supposed to stay in for the night? She was, indeed. So, had she been talking to the police? Trying to give them information concerning the secret annex (she might have known something about it). To bribe them?
The researchers considered that unlikely. Maybe, they philosophized, the police just did not think she was dangerous. After all, in early August, the days were so long (? It is hard to find logic in this line of reasoning). And, you know what, the war would soon be over anyway: the Allied Forces had landed on the coast of Normandy. Who would want to be associated with a woman of national socialist preferences?
Having read so many reports myself, I knew the police would not let her go without a good reason: they were strict, there was a war going on. Exceptions were not being made. There had to be a solid reason. And, also, I knew the curfew started at ten in the evening. Not at eight, as the CCT supposed. They could have known this themselves, if they had studied the police reports: nobody was arrested before ten. As soon as the clock made that turn, though, arrests started happening. This is how things went during the war. Curfew at ten? Arrests shortly after ten. Curfew at midnight? Arrests shortly after midnight. Etc.
I decided to have a go at trying to find the woman in the reports myself. A job I was not especially looking forward to, because I did not know the name of the woman. She was being kept anonymous in the book. And I knew how many reports I would need to look through. There were a lot of police stations in Amsterdam. Also, 1944 was a bit of a papermess. Lots of papers to go through, that would certainly not be well ordered.
In hindsight, I discovered the woman within ten minutes of research. Researcher Gertjan Broek of the Anne Frank Stichting was, weeks after the start of my research, so kind as to spontaneously send me her name. The CCT could have found her within three minutes time: she had a very original name. One that occurred only once in the huge databank of the City Archives.
The woman was sent home because, without her, her children were left to their own devices. Young children, or elderly, ill family members home all alone: in these cases, the police sent people off. It wasn't very common, but it happened. As in this case. The information was clear as a whistle. No need to philosophize about it.
So, very early in in my own research, I had stumbled upon her. But, not being acquainted with her name, I had not been aware of it. So I ate my way through a stack of other reports. And it's in this quest, that I found the name of the neighbour living straight across Prinsengracht 263. He was also being arrested on the third of August. He was taken in by an officer from the police headquarters. He, a boy a few years younger than Anne Frank, had been stealing food at a market.
There were two ways in which the boy could have been found by the CCT-researchers: directly in the headquarters' archive or in the reports of the district where Anne Frank was hiding (this is where I found him: the report should, strictly spoken, not have been accessible through that portal, and because of this flaw in the archive's system, he could have been found through two portals).
He was the son of a national socialist. A really inspired, enthusiastic and active national socialist, that is. For example, he worked for the NSKK, at the time. The NationalSozialistisches KraftKorps. A few hours after the arrest of the son, he picked him up at the police station.
Early August, I checked the father's files in the National Archive.
And, yes, I would have loved to read about this nationalsocialist neighbor in Sullivan's book.
But the researchers had decided to just check the buildings around the secret Annex. The front of the building, Frank's office, in which the hiders 'freely' walked around on the weekends, was not taken into consideration.
The Hunger Winter had not yet begun. But it's fair to say that Amsterdam in 1944 lived in a 'Hunger Summer'. And while people, including the inhabitants of the secret annex, had less and less to eat, the food deliveries to the Prinsengracht 263 were still being made om a regular basis. People, neighbours, must have noticed this (maybe not suspected it, but noticed it all the same). Hunger gives you focus. Focus on food, to be exact. Everyone who has ever been on a diet, or very hungry for other reasons, knows this. One loose remark about that food, by the food-stealing boy or by his father, on the eve of the raid, could have been enough: in the summer of 1944, some salespeople of Franks company had been meddling with distribution coupons. Also, the police were fully aware of the fact that Frank had not been deported. Like so many others had been.
The son and his father lived straight across Otto Franks company. Anne Frank sometimes looked out of the office's window. Noted in her diary that she had been seeing children, poorly dressed, out on the street.
The boy lived a few meters away from the exact spot where, on the sunny morning of August 4, Jan Gies, Mieps husband, would watch the arrest of the eight hiders. He mentioned this in 1963/1964 in his conversation with policeman Arend van Helden, who, at the time, was researching the betrayal of Anne Frank. Gies chose that exact spot, he explained, because this gave him the best view on the Prinsengracht 263.
Van Helden, who in 1963/1964 had also interviewed Lages and Aus der Fünten, the captive leaders of the SD, and who had observed that neither of them had recognized the name 'Van den Bergh'. Aus der Fünten had also told him that he knew nothing about adress lists. Adress lists lying around at the Jewish Council and that, supposedly, notary Van den Bergh had used to betray his Jewish fellow human beings. Among whom not just the people in the secret annex, but also dozens of others. Van Helden had written down that observation in publicly available material. Now, that is. Now it is publicly available material. The CCT had all the information but seems to have been completely focused on the famous note. The famous, anonymous note that years after the war had been delivered to Otto Frank.
In their response to the criticisms, the researchers of the CCT emphasized that they had conducted a forensic investigation, not a historic one. But what is the value of a forensic investigation that does not take basic police information into account?
Both Natasha Gerson and I found information - and the amount of information Gerson dug up is huge - that the coldcase-researchers should have found. It's information that they, working with such a big team and so many resources, probably would have found. If they had tried to look for it.