AMSTERDAM (AP) — A cold case team that combed through evidence for five years in a bid to unravel one of World War II's enduring mysteries has reached what it calls the "most likely scenario" of who betrayed Jewish teenage diarist Anne Frank and her family.
The cold case team, put together by filmmaker Thijs Bayens and led by retired FBI agent Vincent Pankoke, detailed their findings in the book “The Betrayal of Anne Frank A Cold Case Investigation," the Associated Press reported.
The team says it could have been a prominent Jewish notary called Arnold van den Bergh, who disclosed the secret annex hiding place of the Frank family to German occupiers to save his own family from deportation and murder in Nazi concentration camps.
Anne Frank famously kept a diary, which was published after the war, the AP reported.
In her diary, she wrote about how her family and four other Jews hid behind a bookcase from July 1942 until August 1944 when they were discovered and sent to concentration camps, the news outlet reported.
According to the AP, the only member of the Franks family to survive was Anne's father, Otto.
15-year-old Anne and her sister died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, the AP reported.
According to the news outlet, Otto was tipped off about the possible involvement of Van den Bergh when he received a typed, anonymous note about Van den Bergh tipping off the German authorities about the Franks hiding.
Van den Bergh died in 1950.
The Anne Frank Museum welcomed the research but said it leaves many questions unanswered.