Tonny ahlers biography for kids
Home / Celebrity Biographies / Tonny ahlers biography for kids
107869: Otto Frank aan Bureau Nationale Veiligheid, 21 augustus 1945.
Otto accepted the letter and gave Ahlers 10 guilders, without being asked. In addition, in the records of Maarten Kuiper, there are a few notes of information about Jews in hiding received from Ahlers, however none of which relate to the secret annexe on Prinsengracht. Owned by Jews, the mob attacked shop workers and customers before the police arrived.
nr. And there is none.”
Ultimately, it seems that unless any new evidence is uncovered, the truth of how Anne Frank and her family were discovered will remain subject to speculation and debate for many years to come.
Since the publication of her diary, speculation has been rife about who betrayed Anne Frank and the others hiding in the secret annexe in Amsterdam.
Kuiper who was a policeman, a member of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB) and the Schutzstaffel (SS), worked for the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) hunting down Jews. They were later joined by the Van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer.
The room was only accessible by a single door, hidden by a bookcase, and just four employees knew about the secret annex: Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Miep Gies, and Bep Voskuijl.
After two years in the annex, police offers – led by SS Hauptscharführer Karl Silberbauer – stormed the building and discovered the secret room.
Utilising modern forensic techniques and AI tools to analyse the existing evidence, Pankoke and his team discovered a new suspect: Arnold van den Bergh.
Van den Bergh was a Jewish notary who worked for the Jewish Council, an organisation set up by the Nazis to influence the Jewish population of occupied Holland. Brock suggested that there may have been no betrayal at all and that in fact the annex may have been uncovered due to the SS raiding the warehouse to investigate illegal wares and trades.
Anna ‘Ans’ van Dijk
In the 2018 book The Backyard of the Secret Annex, Gerard Kremer raised the theory that Ans van Dijk was responsible for the Franks’ capture.
Kremer’s father had been a supporter of the Dutch resistance and an associate of van Dijk.
Anne died, probably of typhoid, between February-April 1945. 3213: Meldingsrapport Centrale Recherche, 20 maart 1938, mut. He was jailed for several months.
The Anne Frank House conducted its own research into Van Dijk’s involvement, but couldn’t confirm it.
Anne Frank on a Dutch postage stamp.
Image Credit: spatuletail / Shutterstock.com
Arnold van den Bergh
In 2016, former FBI investigator Vince Pankoke opened a cold case investigation into the discovery of Anne Frank and her family.
Some months after this incident he started following the Dutch National Socialist E.H. ridder van Rappard. But the theory isn’t without its critics, and van den Bergh is just one of countless culprits investigated over the years as the person who betrayed the Frank family.
Here’s the story of the raid on the secret annex and the possible suspects behind it.
What happened to the Frank family?
Threatened by the Nazis’ persecution of Jews in Holland and across Europe, the Frank family entered the secret annex of Otto Frank’s former workplace at Prinsengracht 263, Amsterdam, on 6 July 1942.
As more Jews joined the hideout, Miep found it impossible to continue gathering rations for all of them. In June 1947, Otto Frank published the first edition of Anne’s diary and in early 1948, Ahlers was released from prison. At the end of 1938 Ahlers took part in the attack on the Bijenkorf Department Store in Amsterdam.