DailyKenn.com — It appears Anne Frank's father, Otto, was dabbling in the illegal trade of food ration coupons.
It was that illicit activity that attracted the attention of government officials. That led to his arrest and, ultimately, his daughter's death.
According to Jewish Telegraph Agency, "[In December, 2016], the Anne Frank House in the Dutch capital published the results of its research into what led policemen working for the Nazi occupation authorities to the home of the family of the teenage Jewish diarist, whose writing became world famous after she perished at the age of 15 in a concentration camp."
The revelation answers the daunting question: Who snitched on the Franks' "hiding place" activities? Apparently, Otto, himself, was the unwitting snitch who attracted police to his Amsterdam home where he was reputedly involved in humanitarian human trafficking.
No one has successfully challenged allegations that Otto's human trafficking was a for-profit illegal operation. However, Dutch prime ministers refused to apologize for the Franks' arrests or for collaborating with Hitler's national socialist government until 2020.
Anne Frank died March 31, 1945. The 15-year-old's death has been attributed to typhus which she contracted while living in a Bergen-Belsen government housing project.
Disease and starvation ravaged the projects that dotted regions occupied by the Third Reich after the Allies imposed rigid sanctions enforced by blockades in an effort to starve Germany into surrender. After feeding troops and the general population, there were scant food and medical resources for the likes of Anne Frank.
That explains Otto's food rationing scheme. No blockade? No food rationing. No food rationing? No Otto Frank food rationing scheme.
But the strategy worked. Germany surrendered May 7, 1945, 37 days after Anne's death. Anne Frank was, apparently, collateral damage resulting from her father's illegal activities and the Allies' impositions.
So, why were Jews hiding at Prinsengracht 263, Amsterdam?
As Allied forces imposed themselves on the Third Reich, those deemed likely to be less than loyal to the government were carted off to internment centers. In keeping with the spirit of The Transfer Agreement, Jews, we are told, were earmarked for deportation to the vicinity of 31.0461° N, 34.8516° E. Those slated for a layover at the disease-infested camps were, of course, not eager to make the trip. Besides, rumors were rampant that the camps had converted their showers and delousing facilities into gas chambers and the deceased were being cremated or skinned, tanned, and turned into tattooed lampshades.
Who wouldn't pay top dollar (or Reichsmark) for a hiding place?
According to the official narrative, Jews housed by Otto expressed their gratitude by supplying free labor to keep his pectin and spice business afloat. Was Otto's secret room a hiding place for indentured servants? It appears so.
Who would dare suggest that Schindler's list was a manifest of Jewish slaves employed by a savvy businessman chiseling down labor costs to near nothing? Frank and Schindler were, apparently, two of a kind.
An interesting side note: The police who discovered "the secret room" were not looking for Jews, nor were they employed to. They were likely investigating financial fraud. Otto's business director Victor Kugler was cited for keeping a portion of the company's income out of the books. Warehouse worker Lammert Hartog was cited for doing undeclared work.
It appears that Otto was avoiding authorities in "the secret room" for more than trafficking Jews.
The diary, itself, has become a point of contention as detractors question its veracity. Could the diary be another of Otto's money-making rackets? Critics seem to think so. They note that Anne's mental meanderings seem mature for a young girl and wonder aloud if the diary was written by Otto, himself. More than 30-million copies of the book have been sold. Add movie rights and conclude that the work provided Otto with a comfortable retirement.
Even apologists for the diary's authenticity admit that Otto edited the journal. Ostensibly, he purged passages thought to be embarrassing to the Frank's family legacy. They may be on to something. Still, they stop short of suggesting Otto may have snipped segments implicating his shady business dealings or pointing to an authoritarian and abusive father.
Let's extrapolate. How many Jew-saving heroes of the era were actually grifters exploiting the darkest hours of recent human history? And, please, don't count Corrie ten Boom among them. Some history is too sacred to question.
Or is it?
Like Otto Frank, Corrie ten Boom dabbled in ration cards. Like Otto, she enjoyed a successful business career, overseeing the financial side of her father's watch repair business. And, like Otto, she spun her humanitarian human trafficking into a best-selling book, The Hiding Place, and movie by the same name. In the book, published in 1971, she admitted requesting 100 ration cards when only five were needed. Was that a one-time offing? Or was it done often? Were the cards given to Jews? Or were they sold to Jews? We'll have to take Ten Boom's word for it.
As for Oskar Schindler, he wrote no book. Rather, a book was written about him and published in 1982. The book was titled, Schindler's Ark. The movie version, Schinlder's List, premiered in 1993. Unlike the religious and pompous Ten Boom, Schindler was a hedonist, noted womanizer, alcoholic, and member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Emerging from the depths of depravity — like a little boy surfacing from a crowded outhouse toilet — was Schindler's proclivity for rescuing Jews from certain death. To understand the irony, you'll have to watch the movie in which the Kraków, Poland camp commander, Amon Göth, was portrayed as the womanizing hedonist.
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| "Fiction" / Amazon.com |
Truth be known, the truth isn't known. That's why no history is sacred and skeptics must be welcomed to apply the scientific method and follow it with unbiased objectivity wherever it may lead.
It's also known that we tend to find what we're looking for. Where we look for villains, we will find them. Where we look for heroes, we will find them as well. So, who are the villains and who are the heroes? It depends on who's looking.
Had I been a Jew living at that time in those places, I would have been eternally grateful to those who sheltered me from the camps, even if the room-and-board was a bit steep or the pay far below scale.
Still, we wonder if these "heroes" were authentic emissaries of humanitarianism or clever charlatans who found humanitarian human trafficking to be a lucrative side hustle to be exploited during and long after the Second World War.
We also wonder if Otto intended to rescue Jews from Zyklon B pesticide or typhus genocide. We'll probably never know. He died in 1980.
updated 2022-01-15 9:04 pm est
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