After the stir generated by the hypothesis of the book Who betrayed Anne Frank? which points to Jewish lawyer Arnold van den Bergh as an informer of the location where Anne Frank was hiding in Amsterdam, the Dutch publishing house Ambo Anthos decided not only to suspend the reprinting of the copies but to cancel their publication and withdraw the books in the bookstores.
The announcement was released this Wednesday, following the research carried out by a group of historians on the controversy that sparked the theory embodied by Canadian Rosemary Sullivan.
She pointed to a Jewish lawyer, Van den Bergh, as the possible whistleblower of the author of the most famous Holocaust diary.
Arnold van den Bergh could have revealed Anne Frank's hiding place in Amsterdam to save her own family.
The investigation for the book was carried out by a team specializing in cold cases, convened by filmmaker Thijs Bayens and led by a former FBI agent.
From the outset, the Canadian hypothesis was rejected by researchers from all over the world, considering that it is based on assumptions and misinterpretations of sources.
But it was not until the end of the work in which six researchers participated that the Dutch publisher decided to remove the copies from circulation.
“Based on the findings of the report, we have decided that the book is no longer available with immediate effect. We will call on bookstores to return their stock,” said Ambo Anthos, after the back-and-forth with this theme, which initially resulted in the suspension of reprinting and finally seems to end with this announcement.
When Rosemary Sullivan's book was published researchers specializing in the history of the Jewish girl and the Holocaust in the Netherlands defined the hypothesis “unstable as a house of cards” and full of “defamatory nonsense”.
As a remedy for the damage caused, the publisher extended “once again our sincere apologies to those who have been offended by the content of the book,” Ambo Anthos concluded in its statement.
Source: Telam