Dutch Publisher of ‘The Betrayal of Anne Frank’ Halts Publication

AMSTERDAM — A Dutch writer has stated that it’ll now not publish a best-selling guide, “The Betrayal of Anne Frank,” which claimed to determine the informant who alerted Nazi police to the teenage diarist’s hiding place, due to doubts about its conclusions.

The writer, Ambo Anthos, which launched the Dutch translation of the guide by the writer Rosemary Sullivan in January, stated on Tuesday that it could halt publication in response to a “refutation” by 5 distinguished Dutch historians that referred to as the findings into query.

“Primarily based on the conclusions of this report, now we have determined that, efficient instantly, the guide will now not be out there,” Ambo Anthos, which had apologized for the guide final month, wrote in an announcement on its web site. “We’ll name upon bookstores to return their inventory.”

“The Betrayal of Anne Frank” obtained worldwide consideration in January after a self-described “chilly case staff” led by a retired F.B.I. investigator whose work fashioned the idea for the guide was featured on the CBS Information program “60 Minutes.”

The staff accused Arnold van den Bergh, a Dutch Jewish notary, of pointing the Nazi police to the tackle of Prinsengracht 263, the placement of the key annex in Amsterdam the place the Frank household and 4 different Jews had been hiding for 2 years.

Historians and different consultants on World Battle II and the Holocaust in a short time expressed doubts in regards to the discovering, questioning a central premise of its argument: that the notary had lists of Jewish hiding locations that have been compiled by the Amsterdam Jewish Council, a corporation the occupying Nazis had arrange in 1941.

Pieter van Twisk, the lead researcher for the cold-case venture, stated in an interview with The New York Occasions on the time that the proof for the lists was “circumstantial, however circumstantial proof remains to be proof.”

On Tuesday evening, Bart Pockets, a professor of Jewish Research on the College of Amsterdam, summarized the findings of the refutation, written by Raymund Schütz, an skilled on Dutch notaries in the course of the German occupation; two consultants on the Amsterdam Jewish Council, Laurien Vastenhout and Bart van der Increase; and two different researchers, Petra van den Boomgaard and Aaldrik Hermans.

“We felt we needed to step in as a result of we owed it to our self-discipline,” Professor Pockets stated. “For such a declare to be made,” he added, the historic context “needed to be strong as a rock.” However he stated, this was “not the case, by no means.”

“It’s clear that the argumentation doesn’t maintain up,” he concluded. “On account of misinterpretation and tunnel imaginative and prescient, the investigation wrongly identifies Arnold van den Bergh as Anne Frank’s betrayer.”

Mirjam de Gorter, granddaughter of Arnold van den Berg, had made an emotional public enchantment to HarperCollins at an occasion the place the report was launched, asking that the writer problem a retraction and stop publication.

She stated that she had repeatedly knowledgeable the investigators and the writer of the placement the place her grandfather and his household have been in the summertime of 1944, when Anne Frank was betrayed. They ignored her, she stated, and claimed that Mr. van den Bergh had received his freedom by giving up addresses to the Nazis.

“My grandfather, Arnold van den Bergh, has been portrayed worldwide as a world scapegoat,” she stated. “In the meantime, Anne Frank’s worldwide prominence is exploited in a very dishonest means.”

Ambo Anthos had beforehand paused printing and distribution of the guide. “A extra important stance may have been taken right here,” wrote Tanja Hendriks, writer and director of the corporate. Ms. Hendriks didn’t reply to requests for touch upon Wednesday.

The writer’s web site now states, “We might as soon as once more like to supply our honest apologies to everybody who has been offended by the contents of this guide.”

Mr. van Twisk, Ms. Sullivan and the documentary filmmaker Thijs Bayens, who was a member of the staff that was assembled to determine Anne Franks’s betrayer, additionally didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark. The cold-case staff’s lead investigator, the previous F.B.I. detective, Vince Pankoke, has beforehand issued a protection of the work, nonetheless.

“Till now, now we have not been introduced with any piece of proof or any new info that had sufficient power to problem our conclusion,” he famous earlier than the refutation was launched. “The van den Bergh situation is, in our opinion, nonetheless probably the most viable concept in regards to the betrayal of the Prinsengracht 263.”

HarperCollins U.S., which launched the guide on Jan. 17 with plans to publish it in additional than 20 languages, has to this point provided no response to the criticisms.