“The Betrayal of Anne Frank” by Rosemary Sullivan

Who and why? Is there an answer?

This is one of the most enlightening books I've read recently.

It's one of those eye-opening reads that leave you thinking and wishing that the events described in it were not true.

After two years of hiding in a space known as the "Secret Annex", on August 4, 1944, Anne Frank, her family, and four other people were arrested by the police and taken to concentration camps. Through a cold case investigation that took several years, the big question that this book looks to shed a light on is, who and why betrayed them?

Led by a retired FBI agent, the team that took on this investigation was made up of criminologists, psychologists, archivists, and forensic scientists, who analyzed thousands of documents and interviewed descendants of people related to the case in order to solve this mystery.

While writing these notes I learned that the book had been pulled in the UK because the findings in it were discredited, and there seems to have been some controversy about who the research team suggests as the responsible for the arrests. Of course it's hard to know the right answer to who betrayed the Frank family and the other four people in hiding. However, the book provides a view into what life was like during this period and what Anne and the rest of the group in the Secret Annex went through before and during their time in hiding and after their arrest.

I picked this book looking to learn more about this period in history and I certainly did. It's not a light read for sure, however I definitely recommend reading it, and approaching it from an educational and learning perspective.