How Gold Coast cop helped crack Anne Frank cold case
From Merrimac High to the Hague, Brendan Rook has experienced adrenaline highs and humanity’s lows … and made history along the way
onal war crimes investigator, the heat was on – even if this cold case was more than 70 years old.
Because the victim was Anne Frank, the Jewish teenage diarist who became the world’s best known victim of the Nazi Holocaust. Brendan was part of an international team charged with forensically examining evidence to determine who was responsible for betraying Anne and disclosing the secret annex hiding place of her family to the Nazis in 1944. Spending months afterhours in the dark of the historic Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, Brendan was miles away, literally and figuratively, from his days at Merrimac High. Working with archival researchers, criminologists, historians and investigative psychologists, Brendan and the team, who were filmed by a Dutch Production for Netflix, made history and got their man … or at least the most likely suspect for the devastating betrayal. After so many decades, the evidence can only be circumstantial, and the theory proposed will, of course, be subject to further critical evaluation.
Yet while they were looking for a perpetrator,
Brendan says what they found was really another victim.
The heartbreaking results are yet another chapter in the father-of-three’s career, which has been full of adrenaline highs and humanity’s lows, from his first days working on the beat in Logan to hunting war criminals in Africa.
“I joined Queensland Police in 1987 at the age of 17 and was based in Logan and Woodridge, which was the wild west back then,” he says.
“By the time I was 20 I was based in Broadbeach as a detective, then later as part of the casino crime squad. That was right in the thick of the Fitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption. I saw some of my colleagues go down.
“The Gold Coast was running red hot then, and everyone was being tarred with the same brush, but the reality was more complex.
“At the same time as some were being charged with corruption, I saw others who worked with such integrity and passion, it’s really been the theme of my career and my life I guess … the fact of humanity is that there is always good alongside the bad. And often, that’s within the same person.”
Brendan was later promoted to the state crime operations command in Brisbane, working in specialist squads including homicide, major and organised crime, fraud and sexual crimes, as well as working with the National Crime Authority (now the Australian Crime Commission) and graduating from the Duntroon Royal Military College.
But as he realised that continued promotion meant being tied to a desk, he started to look for new opportunities.
That’s when he decided to apply for a role as a senior investigator with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) based in the Hague, the Netherlands.
In a whirlwind hiring process which took a record two months rather than the expected two years, Brendan found himself on the other side of the world investigating war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.
For more than 10 years, until his resignation in 2021 due to family commitments, Brendan led investigative missions across the globe, often with little or no security.
He interviewed both suspects and victims of crimes related to Libya’s dictator Muammar Gadaffi, Sudan’s President Al-bashir, Uganda’s Joseph Kony and more.
He found himself in the midst of a hostile gathering in Tunisia, accused of being an American and a spy during the Arab Spring, was held at gunpoint in the Central African Republic and heard horrific stories of the victims of systematic rape and sexual violence, many of whom were just children.
While he’s learned to compartmentalise his work, he says no cop or investigator is ever immune from crimes against children.
And that’s exactly how he still sees Anne Frank.
So when the call came to join the historic cold case team, he could not walk away.
“The project appealed to me for a number of reasons. Firstly, at the time I was a war crimes investigator with the International Criminal Court … and the court was established on the back of war crimes committed in World War II,” says Brendan, who now works with the School of Justice at QUT.
“Secondly, I was a former homicide detective having worked on cold cases … although this particular case was more frozen than cold.
“But the fact that this was a crime against a child always resonates.
“Anne would be in her 90s now, but she will forever be a
Anne would be in her 90s now, but she will forever be a young teenage girl. That’s the person we all relate to. We have all grown up with her in a way.
young teenage girl. That’s the person we all relate to. We have all grown up with her in a way.”
Anne Frank, her parents and older sister Margot, as well as four other Jews, hid above an Amsterdam warehouse and offices, reached by a secret staircase behind a hinged bookcase, from July 1942.
On the morning of August 4, 1944, the annexe was raided by officers of the SS Jew Hunting Unit.
The Franks were taken on the last train to Auschwitz. Only Anne’s father, Otto
Frank, survived the war. Anne and her sister died in the Bergen-belsen concentration camp. Anne was 15.
The diary Anne wrote while in hiding was left behind in the annexe raid and later published by her father in 1947 when he returned, becoming a symbol of hope and resilience that has been translated into dozens of languages and read by millions.
However, the identity of the person who gave away the location of their hiding place has always remained a mystery, despite previous investigations.
The evidence and findings of Brendan’s team, led by retired FBI agent Vincent Pankoke, is detailed in the recently released book The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation by Canadian academic and author Rosemary Sullivan.
Their answer is that it could have been a prominent Jewish notary named Arnold van den Bergh.
Brendan says that a brief note, a typed copy of an anonymous tip delivered to Otto Frank after the war, names van den Bergh, who died in 1960, as the person who informed German authorities in Amsterdam where to find the Frank family.
The note was an overlooked part of a decades-old Amsterdam police investigation that was reviewed by the team, which used artificial intelligence to analyse and draw links between archives around the world.
But Brendan says it’s believed that van den Bergh himself only gave the information in order to save his own family from deportation and murder in Nazi concentration camps.
“I think we all like to think that no matter the circumstances, we will be the hero of the hour,” he says.
“But I’ve learned that humans don’t always work like that, especially when your life and your family’s lives are at stake.
“But it’s very interesting that Anne’s father never gave up van den Bergh’s name, even though he died in 1960. He wanted to protect his name for his family.
“Even now, so many decades later, it has caused shockwaves within the Jewish and Dutch communities that one of their own was responsible. It’s a political issue.
“One thing we do say is that he is the most likely suspect. Some members of the Dutch investigation believe there is enough evidence to convict at a criminal level, I do not necessarily hold this view. I believe the proof suits somewhere between the balance of probability and beyond reasonable doubt. It’s still circumstantial.
“But the way I look at it is that he was a victim himself. The only ones to blame were the Nazis.
“It’s a lesson to reserve judgment. It’s a lesson of how dark the world can turn so quickly. And it’s a lesson that history is always alive.”
Brendan says he could not help but form a personal connection with Anne.
He says despite visiting the Anne Frank House a number of times, it was a different experience treating it as a crime scene.
“The house and annexe had been preserved intact for 75 years, nothing had changed. Every time, I would see it through new eyes of a different suspect or situation,” he says.
“I read Anne’s diary when I was a young person but now I was reading it looking for clues – and we did find some.
“But when you’re reading through it you can’t help but be affected again by what she’s writing as a child, her issues with her mum, but trying to read between those lines as well.
“Probably one of the saddest things was seeing how Anne and the others were finally seeing the light as they were monitoring the Allied forces coming across the border. You can feel their excitement as they believed they were about to be liberated.
“Then came the raid and Anne and her family were on the very last train to Auschwitz.
“Anne had dreams of being a world-famous writer when she grew up, and despite or because of those crimes committed against her, she has had such an enormous impact on the world. Her legacy is reminding us all of the humanity behind every victim of wartime atrocities.
“The tragedy is that it continues to happen even today – just look at Ukraine.”
Indeed, although Brendan finished his work with the cold case team and resigned his role with the ICC to return to Australia and family, he says he doesn’t know if his work is yet complete.
He says watching the situation unfold in Ukraine and hearing of the war crimes being committed, it’s difficult to sit still.
“I do find it hard to be out of the game, my mind is still there,” he says.
“But my family has suffered because of my career, I owe them time.
“I’m still looking at getting involved in investigative activities as required. To me, those who have the privilege to know have the responsibility to act.
“You need good people to hold the bad accountable. The fact is that society has elements of evil and will always have elements of evil. That’s why we have laws, to keep those people in check.
“With the evil of every criminal, I have also seen the bravery of the victim and the witness, as well as the good intentions of the investigator and prosecutor.
“I have seen the worst that people are capable of, but also the best. I saw it in those early days in Broadbeach police station, and I saw it in Amsterdam.”
And, just as the cold case of Anne Frank shows, there is no statute of limitations on the truth.