{"id":191613,"date":"2022-12-09T07:15:53","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T12:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=191613"},"modified":"2022-11-30T10:02:03","modified_gmt":"2022-11-30T15:02:03","slug":"uconn-magazine-who-betrayed-anne-frank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2022\/12\/uconn-magazine-who-betrayed-anne-frank\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Magazine: Who Betrayed Anne Frank?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rosemary Sullivan \u201969 MA<\/strong>\u00a0was a 12-year-old schoolgirl in Quebec, Canada, when she first read \u201cThe Diary of Anne Frank.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt seemed just \u00adotherworldly that somebody would be trapped in a house for two years without being able to look out the window or make any noise,\u201d she recalls. Rereading the diary as an adult, familiar with the wartime context, \u201cchanged my relationship with Anne Frank,\u201d she says. \u201cI was deeply impressed by the intelligence and candor and the moments of satire. It was an astonishing performance for a child from the age of 13 to 15.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Her re-encounter was a prerequisite to a project that has captured headlines \u2014 and stimulated controversy \u2014 around the world this year. \u201cThe Betrayal of Anne Frank\u201d (HarperCollins) is Sullivan\u2019s meticulous account of a 5-year-long cold case investigation into a longstanding mystery: how Anne Frank, her family, and four other Jews hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam came to be arrested and deported. (Of the eight, only Anne\u2019s father, Otto Frank, would survive the war.)<\/p>\n

The investigation, featured on CBS\u2019s \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d identified a surprising culprit: Arnold van den Bergh, a prominent Jewish notary desperate to save his own family.\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0reviewer Alexandra Jacobs found the argument for his culpability \u201cconvincing, if not conclusive.\u201d The reaction abroad \u2014 at least from those countries with the greatest stake in the story \u2014 was less favorable. In response to a critical report by five Dutch historians, the Dutch publisher, Ambo Anthos, announced in March that it would cease publication and remove the title from bookstores. HarperCollins Germany delayed the book but plans to publish a revised version later this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never doubted, and I still don\u2019t doubt, the integrity of the investigation,\u201d Sullivan says, noting that her larger goal was to describe the context of the tragedy. While tracing the investigation\u2019s labyrinthine twists, she paints a portrait of World War II Amsterdam as a site of scarcity, peril, and shifting political allegiances. Death shadowed the entire Dutch civilian population, but especially the country\u2019s Jews, most of whom died in Nazi concentration camps. \u201cIt should be possible to understand that van den Bergh was as much a victim as anybody else,\u201d Sullivan says.<\/p>\n

Read on for more.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI love the hunt,\u201d says Rosemary Sullivan \u201969 MA, a queen of compelling biography. Her latest tome tackles one of World War II\u2019s most persistent and villainous mysteries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":191614,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,2226,2235,102,2227],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[117],"class_list":["post-191613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-clas","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-magazine","category-uconn-edu-homepage"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 16:01:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191615,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191613\/revisions\/191615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/191614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191613"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=191613"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=191613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}