One of the most frequently asked questions about the history of Anne Frank and the inhabitants of the Secret Annex is: Who actually betrayed them? This question continues to intrigue people. The Anne Frank House (AFH) still regularly receives suggestions, usually singling out specific individuals. These suggestions are always taken seriously but so far have not provided useful leads. And, of course, here at the Anne Frank House this question is always present in the background. In recent years, the AFH has made more of a commitment to focus on conducting its own research, so this matter is now part of the Knowledge Centre’s research program.

Premise and Background

This investigative report is based on the premise that only one thing can be agreed on with certainty: on 4 August 1944, members of the Sicherheitsdienst or SD (German Security Service) raided the building at 263 Prinsengracht and arrested ten people. It is an assumption – granted a sound one – that this was not a chance occurrence. Obviously, the building had been selected for a reason. Yet, on what information that raid was based and how the SD got that information is still completely unclear. Whether this was a matter of betrayal, committed deliberately or not, is also an assumption. It remains to be seen if an analysis of the available data convincingly supports this decade-old theory. Shortly after the liberation, Otto Frank and the helpers took steps to identify those who might have been responsible for the betrayal. The question of whether betrayal had taken place was not under discussion at that moment. In 1963, after the Austrian “Nazi-hunter” Simon Wiesenthal tracked down the former SS Officer Karl Joseph Silberbauer, the man who had led the raid on the Secret Annex, the assumption of betrayal seemed to be confirmed. Consequently, until now the literature on this subject has always focused on the question of who? It has long been assumed that a betrayer was out there who needed to be found. However, the sobering reality is that to date this avenue of thinking has yielded nothing conclusive.

Research Question and Sources

Considering the above, there is sufficient reason to be receptive to new perspectives and not to exclude other theories. Given what was just presented in the last paragraph, the proposed research question is: Based on what information did the SD raid 263 Prinsengracht on 4 August 1944, and how did it acquire this information? Both existing and previously unknown sources have been consulted to address this question. Earlier studies generally relied on source material from the files of the Centraal Archief van de Bijzondere Rechtspleging or CABR (Central Archives for Special Criminal Jurisdiction). Despite extensive research, no definitive leads have ever been found there, but information in these files can still be very helpful. Therefore, during this study, a lot of data was scrutinized again and compared with previously unknown or untapped sources. This material included police reports from Amsterdam, Zwolle, and Haarlem, as well as records from the judicial authorities in the latter two cities. In addition, the increasing digitization of data from municipal population registers has made it easier to access information and identify how people might be connected. The ongoing historical research done by the Anne Frank House in recent years has provided more understanding as well. These insights have also been applied while re-examining earlier ideas and theories. Of course, in the analysis of all the related data, existing publications were also consulted. Over the years, several books have been released about the betrayal of people in hiding during the wartime occupation and how they were hunted down.^[1] Biographies about both Anne and Otto Frank also present different theories about the events leading up to the raid on 4 August 1944.^[2] Nonetheless, as the 2003 evaluation conducted by researchers David Barnouw and Gerrold van der Stroom of the NIOD (Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, previously the Dutch Institute for War Documentation) concludes, these theories do not stand up to scrutiny.^[3] An overview of the source material used for this investigation – published as well as unpublished – is included at the end of this report