How Nazis ‘really’ found Anne Frank
The Nazis may have discovered Anne Frank’s hiding place by accident — and not because the tragic teenager and her family were betrayed, as historians have long believed.
A new study conducted by Amsterdam’s Anne Frank House Museum and reported by The Sunday Times of London found no evidence that Anne, and the seven other Jews who lived with her in hiding for two years, were denounced to German occupiers in 1944.
Instead, the Nazis may have been chasing down counterfeiters who were producing false ration coupons.
Two men who worked in the commercial building where the Frank family huddled in a secret annex — and whom Anne wrote about in her now-famous diary — were arrested for dealing fake coupons on the black market, the study found.
“During their day-to-day activities, investigators . . . often came across Jews in hiding by chance,” wrote historian Gertjan Broek.
Broek found no proof of a connection between the ar- rests and the roundup of the Frank family on Aug. 4, 1944, but also found no evidence of a denunciation that could have led the Germans to the movable bookcase in the building on the Prinsengracht canal.
Anne died at the age of 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in February 1945, two months before it was liberated by Allied forces.
Her father, Otto, the only family member to survive the camps, discovered her journal when he returned after the war.
Her heartbreaking account of her life in hiding was translated into 67 languages and turned Anne into an icon.
In the decades since World War II, researchers have never come to a consensus over how the Franks were discovered.