The investigation by the cold case team that the Jewish notary Arnold van den Bergh identified as the likely traitor to the Frank family, “is based on incorrect use of sources and unsound argumentation”. That is what a team of six experts in the field of the persecution of the Jews puts in a statement report published on Tuesday† Van den Bergh has been wrongly accused, they conclude.
The cold case team’s investigation was world news in January. Led by a former FBI agent, the team had examined all possible scenarios about the betrayal of the people in hiding in the Secret Annex. Their conclusion: the most likely traitor was notary Arnold van den Bergh, a member of the Jewish Council and in that capacity in possession of lists of hiding addresses of Jews. To save his own life and that of his family, Van den Bergh would have passed it on to the Germans.
Immediately after the publication of the research and the book about it by Rosemary Sullivan, a storm of criticism broke out. The evidence from the cold case team would be paper thin and rustling with errors. In an interview with NRC Pieter van Twisk and Thijs Bayens, the initiators of the study, stood by their conclusions. They emphasized that they had approached the project as a cold case and not as historical research.
Also read this piece by Arnon Grunberg: Anne Frank belongs to everyone – that is also treason
Footnotes and Resources
In their report, the six historians reject this defence. †[O]ok forensic evidence will eventually have to stand the test of scientific criticism.” In the 72 pages of The Jewish Notary and the Charge of Treason follows that critique, amply provided with footnotes that refer to sources that are partly missing from Sullivan’s book.
The authors – including professor of Jewish studies Bart Wallet (UvA) and historian Bart van de Boom (University of Leiden), whose book about the Jewish Council will be published next month – go through the evidence of the cold case team point by point.
They also have methodological criticism, especially with regard to the source use of the cold case team. Take, for example, their most important piece of evidence: a note that father Otto Frank received after the war, in which Van den Bergh was identified as a traitor. The copy of this made by Otto Frank is not well understood and notes by a detective have not been deciphered or have been incorrectly deciphered, according to the authors of the report.
According to the historians, the team investigating the betrayal of the Secret Annex had tunnel vision
In addition, the members of the cold case team have insufficient understanding of the functioning of the Jewish Council. For example, Sullivan writes that the council drew up deportation lists, while this was done by the German authorities Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung† Finally, the team suffered from tunnel vision, Wallet et al. “Sources of Nazis and collaborators are not taken over critically, while sources that are favorable to Van den Bergh are set aside or do not appear in the book at all.”
frame
This creates framing and paints a picture of Van den Bergh as a smart and cunning Jewish notary with connections to high-ranking Nazis who committed great treason at the decisive moment, the authors of the report write. And that is unfair, they think.
Van den Bergh, in order to remain in the language of the cold case team, had neither knowledge, motive, nor opportunity to commit the betrayal. Knowledge: there were no lists with the Jewish Council of hiding addresses. Motive: Van den Bergh’s children had been in hiding since October 1943, he and his wife from February 1944. Why then would he have betrayed people in hiding in August 1944 to save his family? Opportunity: Van den Bergh had no access to important Nazis in the Netherlands, not even because he had been involved as a notary in the sale of the collection of the Jewish art dealer Goudstikker.
Laurien Vastenhout, co-author of the report and who works at the NIOD, says in a telephone conversation that the research was not commissioned. “We wanted to further substantiate our criticisms previously expressed in the media. That’s why we went back to the archives.”