A new book claims it has the answer to the question which has plagued historians since the publication of Anne Frank's diary -- who gave her up to the Nazis- Anne Frank became famous for the diary she kept after her family went into hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam when she was 13. The Jewish teenager died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, at the age of 15. A book about Dutch resistance member Elisabeth "Bep" Voskuijl alleges her sister Nelly was a Nazi collaborator who had revealed the whereabouts of the Frank family's hideout. Bep and her father Johan helped the Frank family and brought them food as they hid from the Nazis. The book, written by Voskuijl's son Joop van Wijk and Flemish journalist Jeroen De Bruyn says Nelly became a Gestapo informant at age 19 and remained one until the age of 23. The information comes from testimonies made by Bep's sister Diny and fiance during the war Bertus Hulsman. The two had refused to cooperate and recount their stories of what happened 70 years ago until recently. In the book, Nelly was angered by her father and sister's sympathy for the Jews and at one point yelled at them, "Just go to your Jews!" The writers also used testimonies from Nazi Officer Karl Silberbauer who led the arrest of the Frank family. After being identified in 1963, Silberbauer said he had received the tip from a "young woman," further supporting the authors' claims. Joop van Wijk said his mother, who died in 1983, suspected for years her sister had tipped the Nazis off about the Frank family, but refused to discuss it publicly as to not taint her family name. "It was painful but unavoidable adding Nelly's name to the long list of suspects [of betraying the Frank family]," van Wijk said. Nelly Voskuijl died in 2001. Since its first publication, Anne Frank's diary, which was translated into about 75 languages, has led many to search for the informant who led the Nazis to the Frank family. In 1949, courts acquitted Willem van Maaren, a cleaner who worked at a warehouse near the Frank family's hideout, after he was accused of being the informant. The Frank family's close associates also denied Austrian historian Melissa Muller's claim in the late 1990s that the informant was a cleaning woman by the name of Lena Herzog.
'Anne Frank was betrayed by relative of her protectors'
Joop van Wijk says his mother, Dutch resistance member Elisabeth "Bep" Voskuijl, suspected that her sister Nelly tipped the Nazis off about the whereabouts of Anne Frank's family, but refused to discuss it publicly so as not to taint her family's name.
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