Who betrayed Anne Frank and her family?

75 years after its publication the diary of anne  frank remains among the most widely read books   in the world blinkering between hope and despair  the account of a jewish teenager's life in hiding   in an annex behind an amsterdam warehouse  gave voice and a face to millions of victims   of the nazi genocide yet one question has  gone stubbornly unanswered all these years   who alerted the nazi search team in 1944  to anne frank in her family's hiding place   two dutch police inquiries and countless  historians have come up with theories but no firm   conclusions then in 2016 a team of investigators  led by a veteran fbi agent decided to bring modern   crime solving techniques and technology to this  cold case and now they believe they have an answer   one we'll share with you tonight to a question  that's bedeviled historians and haunted holland   who is responsible for the betrayal  the story will continue in a moment vince pancoak had turned in his badge and gun  he was two years into a comfortable florida   retirement when his phone rang in the spring  of 2016. i received a call from a colleague   from the netherlands who said if you're done  laying on the beach we have a case for you were   you laying on the beach i was actually driving to  the beach i wasn't quite there yet pancoque spent   three decades as an fbi special agent targeting  colombian drug cartels his work had also taken   him to the netherlands where his investigative  chops left an impression were you looking to get   back when he told you what it was about after  he told me it was to you know try to solve the   mystery of what caused the raid for anne frank  and the others in the annex i needed to hear more four thousand miles away in amsterdam tyce  bayens a dutch filmmaker and documentarian   had been asking around for a credentialed  investigator to dig into a question that he   feels holland has never quite reckoned with one  that gets to the essence of human nature for me   it was really important to investigate  what makes us give up on each other   the area where anne frank lived is very normal  and it's a very warm area with the butcher and the   doctor and the policemen they work together they  loved each other they lived together and suddenly   people start to betray on each other how could  that happen of the millions literally millions   of stories to come out of the holocaust why do  you think this one resonates the way it does i   think right after the war people were shown the  concentration camps the atrocities that took place   the horror and suddenly you find this innocent  beautiful very smart funny talented girl and she   as a lighthouse comes out of the darkness and  then i think humanity said this is who we are   betraying fellow dutch to the nazis was  a criminal offense in the netherlands   but two police probes and a whole library of books  dedicated to the anne frank case yielded neither   convictions nor definitive conclusions this  question of who betrayed anne frank that had been   investigated for years what was going to make your  investigation different than the ones before it   if it's a criminal act it should be investigated  by police so we set it up as a cold case   like so many pancake had read the diary in middle  school in western pennsylvania and it left a mark   there would be no perp walks or busted crime  syndicates here but he was intrigued cautiously   you hear we're going to go back and look at  anne frank and that might have the ring of   some schlocky media creation did that worry you oh  it did it did because as a career investigator i   didn't want to be associated with any type of a  tabloid type investigation you had to make sure   this was serious let's face it i mean the honor  of the diary the honor of anne frank we had to   treat this with utmost respect what ultimately  sealed it for vince pancoak the guarantee of   absolute autonomy the ground rules tice buy-ins  would oversee the operation and could film the   process for a documentary he's been making there  would be a book about it which helped finance   the project along with funding from the city of  amsterdam but this was going to be an independent   undertaking with serious investigators and vince  pancoak was going to take the lead digging in   you've done cold cases before before this what  was the biggest gap in time between when you were   approached and when the the crime occurred it was  about a five-year crime at that point so it's 75   years it's a little different it's a lot different  this is more than cold this yeah this was frozen   to chip away pan coke had to draw up his own  blueprint he knew that there was going to be   more information to plow through than any human  could handle and that artificial intelligence   could be a secret weapon an fbi man's dream team  was assembled an investigative psychologist a war   crimes investigator historians criminologists  plus an army of archival researchers what did   all these people with disparate skills bring to  this they brought a different view it was all   of these skills that help us understand and put  into context a crime that happened in 1944 we   have to look at things differently together they  dove into a familiar story the frank family had   moved to amsterdam from germany to escape the rise  of hitler they found safety in holland where otto   frank ran a manufacturing business but then the  nazis invaded in 1940. two years later the franks   otto wife edith anne and her sister margot along  with four other jewish friends of the family   went into hiding in an annex behind otto's  warehouse today it's preserved as a museum   dr hettian brook a historian at the anne frank  house showed us in oh well this this is the famous   case that this is the bookcase it's used to  camouflage the entrance to the hiding place   the bookcase helped protect the franks as  did a handful of otto's close colleagues   at the warehouse who were in on the  secret we go inside mind your head after the raid the nazis took anything that  wasn't nailed down these recreations show what   it looked like two cramped floors 761 days more  than two excruciating years indoors the office   workers brought food and supplies but the eight  in hiding couldn't make a sound during the day   by night they could listen to the  radio desperately plotting updates   from the front on this map here's a newspaper  clipping from shortly after d-day june 1944   with the pins to try to follow the advances  of the allied troops in the days and weeks   probably after this is june 1944 1944 so there's  hope as allied forces are on the way their life   depended on what would happen anne's bedroom  walls familiar to any teenager preserved from   the day she was taken away here she chronicled  the monotony and the horror of life in hiding   outside things are terrible day  and night she wrote in january 1943   these poor people are being dragged away with  nothing but a backpack and a little bit of money   her last entry was dated august 1st 1944. she  was 15. take me to the day of the raid it's the   summer of 1944 and what happened that day it's a  warm day sunny and around 10 30 between 10 30 and   11 a couple of men walk in they were detectives  with a dutch police unit working with the nazis   an ss officer named silberbauer led the team they  demanded to be shown around the warehouse they end   up in front of the bookcase which is hiding the  entrance to the annex and it's important i think   to realize that two of the policemen presence  had been seasoned detectives well experienced   they had been searching this type of building in  the inner city of amsterdam before they knew there   was likely something behind that bookcase the  stunned inhabitants they found were marched out   on the floor behind them anne's diary which a  quick thinking office worker loyal to the franks   preserved of the eight taken away otto frank  was the only survivor the others were among the   hundred thousand dutch jews three-quarters of the  country's jewish population to die at the hands   of the nazis in an interview with cbs in 1964 otto  recounted what happened when his family was put on   the cattle cars to auschwitz a month after their  capture on september 4th 1944 the last transport   went to auschwitz well when we arrived in  auschwitz there were men standing there with clubs women here men there we were separated right on  the station so women went to birkenau camp and   we went to auschwitz camp from the station  well i never saw my family again after the   war otto frank was determined to find out  who betrayed the hiding place to the nazis   it was the question many readers asked after he  published his daughter's diary in 1947 but after   a couple of years otto abruptly stopped looking  more on that curious decision later when vince   pancoak went to amsterdam to begin his search his  first stop naturally was the scene of the crime   i call this the most visited crime scene in the  world because so many people from all over the   world you know millions of people come here so  when you come here for the first time what are   you looking for well as an investigator i want  to see what's in the area of course i want to see   inside the building i want to reconstruct  how the actual arrest took place and who   participated in it pancake and his team  spent hours in the annex looking for   any clue however remote so you can see it right  through those bushes he also cased the exterior   today almost exactly as it was then this is the  courtyard that is behind the annex and it's as you   can see it's totally enclosed this courtyard area  is surrounded by the buildings of the neighborhood   i'm thinking one cough that gets overheard one  window that happens to be open at the wrong time   the sheer risk factor here is extraordinary  it is extraordinary when we first started the   case one of the theories that was out there is  that the raid may have been caused by somebody   in the immediate area seeing something hearing  something and reporting it so therefore we tracked   and identified every resident that lived in this  block and adjacent streets using the artificial   intelligence program pancake and his team mapped  potential threats in the courtyards surrounding   the annex they found nazi party members and even  known informants all living just a wall or two   away from one another when you take a look at  the threats the question isn't you know what   caused the raid the question might be how did they  last more than two years without being discovered   it strikes me in a case like this anyone could  be a suspect a nazi sympathizer an informant   someone who happens to walk by and hear a cough  how did you navigate that we had to consider   all those options the team and i sat down and we  compiled a list of ways in which the annex could   have been compromised you know was it carelessness  of the people occupying the annex maybe making   too much noise or being seen in the windows um  you know was it betrayal there is a theory out   there that no one betrayed the frank family this  was coincidence or this was good detective work   do you buy that at all no no i mean we took that  theory apart you know bit by bit this doesn't play   out the way it does but for a specific tip  exactly who provided that tip to the nazis   when we come back vince pancoak and the cold  case team narrowed down their list of suspects   and for the very first time we'll reveal  who they believe betrayed the franks vince pancoak the 30-year fbi veteran had worked  plenty of cold cases but none this cold it had   been more than seven decades since anne frank and  her family had been discovered in their hiding   place in central amsterdam and ultimately put  on cattle cars to auschwitz as to the question   of who betrayed the family to the nazis all the  witnesses were long dead their evidence thinned by   time but pan coke leaned on decades of experience  and intuition starting with the old case files   the story will continue in a moment in a normal cold case you go to a file you  pull it out you read through everything that   the previous investigation did interviews leads  that were followed up on two previous dutch police   investigations into the raid on anne frank's  hiding place one in 1948 and another in 1963 were   not exactly master classes in detective work and  a lot of time had passed the files were incomplete   and they were scattered about in probably a dozen  different archives reports were missing witnesses   had passed on memories had failed pulling from  the standard cold case playbook vince pancoak   followed up on what leads he could otherwise  he and his team had to take a fresh approach   they spent years in places like the amsterdam city  archives where the meticulous dutch record keeping   used so brutally by the nazis proved a major asset  to the investigation people were forced to wear   this star along with peter van tvsk a veteran  dutch journalist who co-founded this project   and led the research team they showed us a trove  of items they dug up including a residence card   belonging to anne frank you can see here her  name her first name second name and her surname   and the date of birth here you see ni which stands  for netherlands israelis which is a religion   netherland israelis yeah i don't know what  he was she was she was jewish yet every dutch   resident had to have one of these yeah this  is this is very detailed this is her parents   birth dates on it that's of course also why it  was quite easy for the nazis to to find people   in the netherlands and to know if who was jewish  and who was not one one piece of paper in the 40s   and you've got everything you could want to know  about someone yeah the team fed every morsel they   could letters maps photos even whole books into  the artificial intelligence database developed   specifically for the project then they let  machine learning do its thing it would identify   relationships between people addresses that were  alike and we were looking for those connections   clues to solving this quantify how much time that  saved you oh thousands and thousands of man hours   this also tells you what's garbage what's excluded  what isn't going to help your case oh yeah because   much of what we do is eliminating the unnecessary  the team paid particular attention to arrest   records from the time the nazis were hell-bent  on ridding the netherlands of all jews part of   the final solution by 1942 the franks were among  some 25 000 jews in hiding across the country   the nazis were coldly skilled at getting people  to talk their typical mo was once they arrested   somebody the first question that was posed to them  do you know where any other jews are in hiding so   what we did is we chronicled all the arrests prior  to and just after the annex raid to try to find   any connection any loose thread that would show us  that they went from one arrest to another and then   ultimately to the annex and the implication  is i'll make your sentence more lenient if you   give up some names yeah effective oh it was very  effective before long suspects emerge dozens of   them like villain van marin an employee in  the warehouse where the franks were hiding   whom the dutch police had interviewed in their  investigations he was prime suspect number one   after the war he's working downstairs in  the warehouse he was very shifty suspicious   actually a thief so he's a shifty suspicious  thief and yet you eliminated him as a suspect   not a betrayer though he was not anti-semitic he  had incentive not to betray them because if he did   he would have lost his job the business  would have been closed what specifically   are you looking for when you're considering  suspects we're looking at did they have the   knowledge we look at their motive you know  what would the motive be were they anti-semitic   were they trying to do this for money and then  opportunity were they even in town so knowledge   motive opportunity that's i'm guessing what you're  using when you're infiltrating drug cartels i mean   this is standard fbi it's standard law enforcement  technique what kind of a person would betray the   frank family you would expect maybe that a very  bad person that this person with i would say   a psychopathic mind would would do this  braum vandemir knows psychopathic minds   he had been an investigative psychologist with  the national police force in the netherlands   on vince pancoat's team he analyzed the behavior  and mindsets of suspects they were considering   that's your first instinct so there  had to be a psychopath to do this yeah   but you have to be so very careful it's war you're  surviving your day-to-day life is filled with fear   your family might be arrested the next day you're  thinking every day about your own survival so   that's the context in a vacuum it had to be  a psychopath to do this but given the context   that's right then what kind of person yeah and  then and then you end up in in a situation where   it could be anybody over time their focus  shifted to someone who on the surface might   not have raised suspicions this suspect wasn't a  neighbor of the franks and didn't work for them   but the fbi man's sixth sense kicked in arnold  vandenberg was a prominent jewish businessman   with a wife and kids in amsterdam after the  invasion he served on the jewish council   a body the nazis set up nefariously to carry  out their policies within the jewish community   in exchange for doing the nazis bidding  members might be spared the gas chambers   we know from history that the jewish council was  dissolved in late september of 1943 and they were   sent to the camps we figured well if  arnold vandenberg is in a camp somewhere   he certainly can't be privy to information  that would lead to the compromise of the annex   was he in a camp somewhere well we thought he  was so due diligence we started to search and   we couldn't find arnold vandenberg or any of his  immediate family members in those camps why not   well that was the question if he wasn't in the  camps where was he turned out he was living in   open life in the middle of amsterdam vince  pancoak says only possible if vandenberg had   some kind of leverage to my ears you're describing  an operator is that fair i call him a chess player   he thought in terms of layers of protection  by obtaining different exemptions from being   placed into the camps as it happened vandenberg  who died in 1950 had come up before in a report   from the 1963 investigation though astonishingly  there was little apparent follow-up by police   we read just one small paragraph that mentioned  that during the interview of otto frank   he told them that shortly after liberation  he received an anonymous note identifying   his betrayer of the address where they were  staying the annex as arnold vandenberg wait so   in the files there's reference to a note that otto  frank received that mentions this specific name   remarkably so yes it's listed right there the note  was so striking to otto frank that he typed up a   copy for his records naturally the veteran fbi man  wanted to know where was that note this was any   seasoned investigator will tell you that ideally  good shoe leather comes garnished with good luck   in 2018 vincent team located the son of one  of the former investigators there in the son's   home buried in some old files otto's copy  of the note i just want to get this straight   you're talking to the son of an investigator he  says yeah 50 years ago my dad looked into this   and i might have some material yeah we were lucky  you've held the metaphorical smoking gun in your   hand before in the fbi you're handling this  anonymous no does it feel like a smoking gun   not a smoking gun but it films like a warm gun  with the evidence of the bullets sitting nearby   back at the archives they showed it to us otto's  copy the team used forensic techniques which they   say authenticates it that handwriting you  see the scribblings of the 1963 detective   the anonymous note informed otto that  he'd been betrayed by arnold vandenberg   who'd handed the nazis an entire list  of addresses where jews were hiding   whoever it was that authored this anonymous note  knew so much that knew that lists were turned in   and this is information you were able to  corroborate peter was able to locate in the   national archive records that indicated that in  fact somebody from the uh jewish council of which   arnold vendenberg was a member was turning over  lists of addresses where jews were in hiding so   what's your theory of the case here how and why  would arnold vandenberg have betrayed the frank   family well in his role as being a founding member  of the jewish council he would have had privy   to addresses on where jews were hiding when  vandenberg lost all his series of protections   exempting him from having to go to the camps  he had to provide something valuable to   the nazis that he's had contact with to  let him and his wife at that time stay safe   is there any evidence he knew who he was giving  up there's no evidence to indicate that he knew   who was hiding at any of these addresses they were  just addresses that were provided where jews were   known to have been in hiding we contacted the  foundation otto frank started in switzerland   and the anne frank house in amsterdam neither of  which formally participated in the investigation   to try to find out whether they could provide  any other evidence that might implicate or clear   arnold vandenberg the anne frank house said they  could not the foundation is reserving comment   until they've seen the entire results of the  investigation the cold case team began to confront   the real possibility that otto frank might have  known the identity of the betrayer what reason   they wondered would otto have had to keep this to  himself he knew that arnold vandenberg was jewish   and in this period after the war anti-semitism  was still around so perhaps he just felt that   if i bring this up again with arnold vandenberg  being jewish it'll always stoke the fires further   but we have to keep in mind that the fact that  he was jewish just meant that he was placed   into a untenable position by the nazis to do  something to save his life the team wrestled with   these ethical questions ty spyens the filmmaker  and documentarian who conceived of the project   wondered whether the revelation would be fodder  for bigots and anti-semites the conclusion was   that this culprit was a jewish man who by all  accounts was doing what he did to protect his   own family what was your emotion when you heard  this i found it very painful maybe you could say   i even hoped it wouldn't be something like this  why because i feel the pain of all these people   being put in in in a situation which is very  hard for us to understand i suspect when this   is revealed people around the world are  going to be uncomfortable with the idea that   a jew betrayed another jew i hope so you hope  they will be yes because it shows you how   bizarre the nazi regime really operated and how  they brought people to do these terrible things   the real question is what would i have done that's  the real question throughout the project bayern   sought counsel from menachem sabah an orthodox  rabbi in amsterdam who also serves as chief   jewish chaplain in the dutch army is a  greater good being served here i hope so   i truly hope so i hope that people will understand  that one of the things that the nazi ideology   did during the holocaust was to dehumanize jewish  people and going back into history and looking   for the truth and attaining truth is actually  giving the jewish people back their own humanity   even if that means that sometimes jewish people  are seen as not acting morally correct that gives   them back their own humanity because that's  the way human beings are when they're faced   with existential threats after his years of  investigating this seven decade old cold case   we had a hypothetical for vince pancoak you're  back to being an fbi agent you've got this case   you've built you've got your evidence and you hand  it over to the prosecutor or the u.s attorney you   think you're getting a conviction no there could  be some reasonable doubt to be clear it's a   circumstantial case it is a circumstantial case as  many cases are in today's crime solving they want   positive dna evidence or video surveillance  tape we can't give you any of that but in a   historical case this old with all the evidence  that we obtain i think it's pretty convincing   now back in retirement vince pankow thinks he's  glimpsed a new way to thaw cold cases he marvels   that an investigation that put no one behind bars  turned out to be the most significant case of   his career and one he believes that brought  an answer to a painful historical question a look at three very different suspects and why  they were crossed off the investigators list   at 60 minutes overtime dot  com sponsored by kola guard

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 3,329,960

Keywords: 60 Minutes, CBS News, Anne Frank, betrayal, Netherlands, Nazis

Id: 1pO_nERBqKo

Length: 27min 36sec (1656 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 17 2022