The publisher of a new and controversial work about Anne Frank is pulling the book after a group of Dutch historians released an in-depth criticism of its “most likely scenario” of who betrayed the Jewish teenage diarist and her family in German-occupied Amsterdam during World War II.
Meanwhile, the US publisher of The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation on Wednesday announced that it would continue to sell the book.
The cold case team’s research, published early this year in a book by Canadian academic and author Rosemary Sullivan, immediately drew criticism in the Netherlands.
Photo: EPA-EFE
In a 69-page written “refutation,” six historians and academics describe the cold case team’s findings as “a shaky house of cards.”
The book’s Dutch publisher, Ambo Anthos, repeated an earlier apology and on Tuesday night announced it was withdrawing The Betrayal of Anne Frank.
The book alleged that the person who revealed the location of the Frank family’s secret annex hiding place was likely a prominent Jewish notary, Arnold van den Bergh, who disclosed the location in an Amsterdam canal-side building to the German occupiers to save his own family from deportation and death in Nazi concentration camps.
The Dutch historians reviewed the team’s work and concluded the “accusation does not hold water.”
The historians said the book “displays a distinct pattern in which assumptions are made by the CCT [cold case team], held to be true a moment later, and then used as a building block for the next step in the train of logic. This makes the entire book a shaky house of cards, because if any single step turns out to be wrong, the cards above also collapse.”
In response, cold case team leader Pieter van Twisk told Dutch broadcaster NOS the historians’ work was “very detailed and extremely solid,” and said it “gives us a number of things to think about, but for the time being I do not see that Van den Bergh can be definitively removed as the main suspect.”
Since the book’s publication in January, the team has published detailed reactions to criticism of its work on its Web site.
Dutch filmmaker Thijs Bayens, who had the idea to put together the cold case team, in January conceded that the team did not have 100 percent certainty about Van den Bergh.
Not all publishers were dropping the book. In the US, HarperCollins Publishers issued a statement saying it stands by The Betrayal of Anne Frank, adding: “While we recognize there has been some criticism to the findings, the investigation was done with respect and the utmost care for an extremely sensitive topic.”
The Frank family and four other Jews hid in the annex, which was reached by a secret staircase hidden behind a bookcase, from July 1942 until they were discovered in August 1944 and deported to concentration camps.
Anne and her sister died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Anne was 15. Only Anne’s father, Otto Frank, survived the Holocaust. He published her diary after World War II and it quickly became an enduring symbol of loss and resilience, read by millions around the world.
Ronald Leopold, director of the Anne Frank House museum based in the building where the Frank family hid, in January said that there remained “many missing pieces of the puzzle, and those pieces need to be further investigated in order to see how we can value this new theory.”
On Wednesday, Leopold said question marks the museum had in January about the cold case team’s conclusions “are supported by the counterexamination of leading historians. You may not consign someone to history as Anne Frank’s betrayer if you do not have conclusive proof. We hope that this counterinvestigation clears Van den Bergh’s name from blame, also for his relatives, including granddaughter Mirjam de Gorter.”
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
RSS