The wartime arrest of Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager who wrote one of the world's best known diaries, may not have been as a result of betrayal as previously thought, a new study has suggested.
Researchers at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam say the annex where she was hiding with her family and four other Jews during World War II may have been unexpectedly raided by authorities investigating rations fraud.
All eight of those in hiding at the annex were arrested on August 4, 1944 and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, in Nazi Germany-occupied Poland.
Only Anne's father Otto survived the war. Anne died at Bergen-Belsen camp in 1945, aged 15.
It has long been suggested that they were betrayed by an anonymous caller to the German Security Service (SD), but the study published on Friday questioned whether the Nazi authorities knew there were Jews on the premises before the raid.
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Anne's diary provided a fresh clue, the study said, when from March 10, 1944, she repeatedly mentions the arrest of two men, whom she refers to as "B" and "D" and who dealt in illegal ration coupons and were based in the same building.
"A company where ... two sales representatives were arrested for dealing in ration coupons obviously ran the risk of attracting the attention of the authorities," the study said.
There were also other "striking aspects" about the case when "compared to an 'ordinary' case of betrayal of Jews in hiding," for example the fact that many telephones had been cut off by 1944 and the SD's telephone number was not in the phone book.
"This creates a real possibility that the call, if it actually took place, came from another government agency," the study said.
Of the three men known to have taken part in the raid, "It has always been assumed that hunting down and arresting Jews in hiding was their primary activity, but sources about their work present a different picture."
In fact, the three appeared to have been primarily occupied with a variety of other crimes, including economic violations, the study said.
"The possibility of betrayal has of course not been entirely ruled out by this, nor has any relationship between the ration coupon fraud and the arrest been proven," the report concluded.
"Clearly, the last word about that fateful summer day in 1944 has not yet been said."
