The Last Secret of the Secret Annex , or The last secret of the secret accommodation, a book to be released on May 16th, brings to light the hypothesis according to which the one who betrayed the young Anne Frank and the other eight people, who for over two years they hid behind a bookshop at 263 Prinsengracht, Amsterdam, were Nelly Voskuijl, sister of Bep who is called Elli Vossen in the diary.
The genesis of the book
The essay published by Simon & Schuster indicates that the girl, who died in the spring of 1945 in Bergen Belsen, according to the authors of the book Joop van Wijk-Voskuijl and Jeroen de Bryin, was betrayed by a telephone call to the SS made by Nelly Voskuijl, Elisabeth’s younger sister, referred to in the diary as Elli Vossen. As can be seen from his surname, Joop van Wijk-Voskuijl, a 74-year-old documentary filmmaker, is Nelly’s nephew and son of Bep, who together with de Bryin (30-year-old journalist) tried to reconstruct this story. Already in 2015, in fact, the two wrote a book entitled Het Zwigen Voorbij (Enough silence), where it was already assumed that the informer was Nelly. The new book tries to give more substance to the suspicions, in fact also refuting the thesis of the book Het verraad van Anne Frank by Rosemary Sullivan, where the notary Arnold van den Bergh was accused of treason, a book that was withdrawn with an apology from the house editor.
Who was Nelly Voskuijl
In the pages of the book, the authors try to understand the personality of van-Wijk-Voskuijl’s aunt, whom they describe as a girl seduced by everything German, who had also worked and frequented the Nazi military before the arrest of the Franks. The testimonies of her sister Diny and Bertus Hulsman, Bep’s boyfriend at the time, also confirm that Nelly knew where the Franks were hiding, and that just the day after their arrest, her father brutally beat her without saying a word. “My mother remained close to Otto (Anne Frank’s father, ed), but shunned any publicity – said Joop van Wijk -, she wanted to be canceled”. “We will never know for sure who betrayed the secret of the secret annex” conclude the authors, even if the book therefore seems to point the finger at Bep’s sister, Nelly Voskuijl.
Source-tg24.sky.it