Is The Diary of Anne Frank genuine?

 

1) Is The Diary of Anne Frank genuine? For two years that question was included in the official syllabus “Critical appraisal of texts and documents”, a seminar reserved for degreed students in their fourth year.

2) The conclusion from my studies and research is that The Diary of Anne Frank is a fraud.

3) In order to study the question posed and find an answer to it I have carried out the following investigations:

1. Internal criticism: the very text of the Diary (in Dutch) relates a number of unlikely or inconceivable alleged facts.
2. A study of the premises in Amsterdam: on the one hand, the physical impossibilities and, on the other hand, the explanations made up by Anne Frank’s father severely compromise him.
3. Interview of the principal witness: Mr Otto Frank.
4. Bibliographical examination: some curious silences and revelations.
5. A return to Amsterdam for a new investigation: the witnesses turn out to be unfavourable to Mr Frank; the probable truth.
6. The “betrayer” and the person who arrested the Franks: why has Mr Frank wished to assure them such anonymity?
7. Comparison between the Dutch and German texts: wanting to do too much, Mr Frank gave himself away; he signed a literary fraud.

 

Chapter I

Internal criticism

4) The first step in the investigation is to determine whether the text is consistent within itself. The Diary contains an extraordinary number of inconsistencies.

5) Let us take the example of the noises. Those in hiding, we are told, must not make the least noise. This is so much the case that, if they cough, they quickly take codeine. The “enemies” might hear them. The walls are that “thin” (25 March 1943). These “enemies” are very numerous: Lewin, who knows the building “like the back of his hand” (1 October 1942), the men from the store, the customers, the deliverymen, the postman, the cleaning woman, the night watchman Slagter, the plumbers, the “sanitation service”, the accountant, the police who conduct their house searches, the neighbours both near and far, the owner, etc. It is therefore unlikely and inconceivable that Mrs Van Daan was in the habit of using the vacuum cleaner every day at 12:30 pm (5 August 1943). The vacuum cleaners of that era were, moreover, particularly loud. I ask: “How is that conceivable?” My question is not purely formal. It is not rhetorical. Its purpose is not to show astonishment. My question is a question. It needs an answer. This question could be followed by forty other questions concerning noises. An explanation is needed, for example, for the use of an alarm clock (4 August 1943). An explanation is needed for the noisy carpentry work: removal of wooden steps, the changing of a door into a swinging bookcase (21 August 1942), the making of a wooden menorah (7 December 1942). Peter splits wood in the attic before the open window (23 February 1944). The work involved making, with that wood, “cupboards and other odds and ends” (11 July 1942). It even involved building “a cubbyhole” in the attic for working (13 July 1943). There is nearly constant noise from the radio, from slammed doors, from the “roar of laughter” (6 December 1943), the arguments, the shouts, the yelling, noise that “was enough to raise the dead.” (9 November 1942). “This was followed by shouts and squeals […] I was doubled up with laughter” (10 May 1944). The episode reported on 2 September 1942 is irreconcilable with a necessity to be silent and cautious. There we see those in hiding at dinner. They chatter and laugh. Suddenly, a piercing whistle is heard. And they hear the voice of Peter who shouts through the stove pipe that he will certainly not be coming down. Mr Van Daan leaps up, “his napkin falling to the floor, and shouted, with the blood rushing to his face, ‘I’ve had enough!’” He goes up to the attic and there, “struggling and kicking”. The episode reported on 10 December 1942 is of the same kind. There we see Mrs Van Daan being looked after by the dentist Dussel. The latter touches a bad tooth with his probe. Mrs Van Daan then “utter[s] incoherent cries” of pain. She tries to pull the little probe away. The dentist “observed the scene, his hands on his hips, while the rest of us roared with laughter”. Anne, instead of showing the least distress in the face of these cries or this mad laughter, declares: “Of course, that was very mean of us. If it’d been me, I’m sure I would have yelled even louder.”

6) I could repeat the remarks I make here regarding noise in regard to all the realities of material and moral life. The Diary even presents the peculiarity that not one aspect of the life lived in the house avoids being either unlikely, incoherent or absurd. At the time of their arrival in their hiding place, the Franks install curtains to hide their presence. But, is not installing curtains at windows that have not had any till now the best means of drawing attention to one’s arrival? Is this not particularly the case if those curtains are made of “scraps of fabric, varying greatly in shape, quality and pattern” (11 July 1942)? In order not to betray their presence, the Franks burn their refuse. But in doing so they call attention to their presence with the smoke that escapes from the roof of a building supposed to be uninhabited! They make a fire for the first time on 30 October 1942, although they arrived in the place on 6 July. One wonders what they can have done with their refuse of 116 days of summer. I shall recall, on the other hand, that the deliveries of food are huge. In normal conditions, the persons in hiding and their guests each day consume eight breakfasts, eight to twelve lunches and eight dinners. In nine passages of the book they allude to bad or mediocre or insufficient food. Otherwise the food is abundant and “delicious”. Mr Van Daan “takes a generous portion of whatever he likes”, and Dussel “consumes enormous portions” of food (9 August 1943). On the spot they make wet and dry sausages, strawberry jam and preserves in jars. Spirits, cognac, wine and cigarettes seem not to be lacking either. Coffee is so common that one fails to understand why the author, enumerating (23 July 1943) what each would wish to do on the day he or she was able to leave the hiding place, says that Mrs Frank’s fondest wish would be to have a cup of coffee. On the other hand, on 3 February 1944 – i.e. during the terrible winter of ’43-’44 – here is the inventory of the supplies available for those in hiding alone, to the exclusion of any cohabiting friend or “enemy”: 60 pounds of wheat, nearly 60 pounds of beans and 10 pounds of peas, 50 cans of vegetables, 10 cans of fish, 40 cans of milk, 10 kilos of powdered milk, 3 bottles of salad oil, 4 preserving jars of butter, 4 jars of meat, 2 bottles of strawberries, 2 bottles of raspberries, 20 bottles of tomatoes, 10 pounds of rolled oats, and 8 pounds of rice. There enter, at other moments, some sacks of vegetables each weighing 25 kilos, or again a sack of 19 pounds of green peas (8 July 1944). The deliveries are made by a “nice greengrocer,” and always “during the lunch hour” (11 April 1944). This is hard to believe. In a city described elsewhere as starving, how could a greengrocer leave his shop, in broad daylight, with such loads to go to deliver to a house located in a busy district? How could this greengrocer, in his own neighbourhood (he was “at the corner”), avoid meeting his normal customers for whom, in that time of scarcity, he should normally be a man to be sought out and entreated for favours? There are many other mysteries regarding other merchandise and how it reaches the hiding place. For holidays, and for the birthdays of those in hiding, the gifts are plentiful: carnations, peonies, narcissi, hyacinths, flower pots, cakes, books, sweets, cigarette lighters, jewels, shaving kits, roulette games, etc. I would like to draw attention to a real feat achieved by Elli. She finds the means of offering grapes on 23 July 1943. I repeat: grapes, in Amsterdam, on 23 July. They even tell us the price: 5 florins per kilo.

7) The invention of the “swinging bookcase” is an absurdity. In fact, the part of the house supposed to have protected the persons in hiding existed well before their arrival. Therefore, to install a bookcase is to evidence, if not a human presence, at least a change in that part of the house. This transformation of the premises — accompanied by the noise of the carpentry work — could not have escaped the notice of the “enemies” and, in particular, of the cleaning woman. And this pretended “subterfuge”, intended to mislead the police in case of a search, is indeed likely, to the contrary, to put them on their guard (”Because so many houses are being searched for hidden bicycles,” writes Anne on 21 August 1942, “Mr Kugler thought it would be better to have a bookcase built in front of the entrance to our hiding place”)? The police, not finding any entrance door to the building serving as a hiding place, would have been surprised by this oddity and would have quickly discovered that someone had wanted to fool them, since they would be standing before a residential building without an entrance!

8) The story is also teeming with implausibilities, inconsistencies absurdities with regard to the following points: the windows (open and closed), the electricity (on and off), the coal (appropriated from the common pile without the “enemies’” realising it), the openings and closings of the curtains or camouflage, the use of the water and the toilet, the means of doing the cooking, the movements of the cats, the shiftings from the front-house to the annex (and vice-versa), the behaviour of the night watchman, etc. The long letter of 11 April 1944 is particularly absurd. It relates a case of burglary. Let it be said in passing that the police are portrayed as stopping in front of the “swinging bookcase,” in the middle of the night, under the electric light, in search of the burglars who committed the housebreaking. They rattle the “swinging bookcase.” These police, accompanied by the night watchman, do not notice anything and do not seek to enter the annex! As Anne says later: “God was truly watching over us.”

9) On 27 February 1943 we are told that the new owner has fortunately not insisted on visiting the annex. Koophuis told him he did not have the key with him and this new owner, although accompanied by an architect, did not examine his new purchase either on that day or any other day.

10) When one has a whole year to choose a hiding place (see 5 July 1942), does one choose one’s office? Does one bring one’s family there? And a colleague? And that colleague’s family? Does one choose a place full of “enemies” that the police and the Germans will automatically come to search if they do not find one at home? Those Germans, it is true, are not very inquisitive. On 5 July 1942 (a Sunday) father Frank (unless it is Margot?!) received a summons from the SS (see the letter of 8 July 1942). This summons will have no follow-up. Margot, sought by the SS, makes her way to the hiding place by bicycle, and this on 6 July, while, according to the first of the two letters of 20 June, the Jews had had their bicycles confiscated some time ago.

11) For a challenge as to the Diary‘s authenticity, arguments of a psychological, literary, or historical order could be invoked. I shall refrain from doing that here. I shall simply remark that the physical absurdities are so serious and so numerous that they have a repercussion of a psychological, literary and historical order.

12) One should not ascribe to the imagination of the author or to the richness of her personality things that are, in reality, inconceivable. Something is inconceivable when “the mind can form no likeness of it because the terms that designate it comprise an impossibility or a contradiction”: for example, a square circle. Someone’s claim to have seen a square circle, ten square circles, a hundred square circles attests neither to a fertile imagination nor a rich personality. For, indeed, the claim and nothing are exactly the same thing. It supplies proof of the poverty of imagination of whoever makes it. That is all. The absurdities of the Diary are those of a poor imagination developing outside any lived experience. They are worthy of a bad novel or a poor lie. Any personality of the slightest depth contains what it is proper to call psychological, mental or moral contradictions. I shall refrain from demonstrating here that Anne’s personality contains nothing of the sort. Her personality is invented and just as implausible as the experience that the Diary is supposed to relate.

From a historical point of view, I would not be surprised if a study of the Dutch newspapers, the English radio and Dutch radio from June 1942 to August 1944 proved a hoax by of the real author of the Diary. On 9 October 1942 Anne speaks already of Jews “being gassed” (Dutch text: vergassing)!

 

Chapter III

Examination of the premises

13) On the one hand, the material impossibilities and, on the other hand, the explanations forged by Anne Frank’s father gravely compromise the latter.

14) Anyone having just read the Diary can, normally, only be shocked on seeing the “Anne Frank House” for the first time. He discovers a “glass house” that is visible and observable from all sides and accessible from its four sides. He discovers also that the floor plan – as reproduced in the book through the efforts of Otto Frank – constitutes a retouching of reality. Otto Frank had steered clear from drawing the ground floor and from telling us that the little courtyard separating the front house from the annex was only 12 feet 2 inches (3.7 metres) wide. He had above all steered clear from point out that this same little courtyard is common to the “Anne Frank House” (263 Prinsengracht) and to the house standing at the right when one looks at the façade (265 Prinsengracht). Thanks to a whole series of windows and window-doors, the people of 263 and those of 265 lived and moved about under the eyes and under the noses (cooking odours!) of their respective neighbours. The two houses make up just one. Besides, the museum today unites the two houses. Furthermore, the annex had its own entrance thanks to a door giving on, from the rear, to a garden. This garden is common to 263 Prinsengracht and to the people opposite, living at 190 Keizersgracht. (A person in the museum can see very distinctly those people of 190 and, besides, of a good number of other addresses on Keizersgracht.) From this side (the garden side) and from the other side (the canal side) I counted two hundred windows of old houses from which there was a view onto the “Anne Frank House”. Even the residents of 261 Prinsengracht could have access, by the roof, to 263. It is derisory to suggest the least possibility of a really clandestine life within these spaces. I say this while taking into account, of course, the changes made to the premises since the war. While showing the view onto the garden, I asked ten successive visitors how Anne Frank had been able to live hidden there with her family for twenty-five months. After a moment of surprise (for people visiting a museum are generally in something of a state of hypnosis), each one of those ten visitors realised, in a few seconds, the total impossibility of it. The reactions were variable; from some, consternation; from others, outburst of laughter (“My God!”). One visitor, doubtless ruffled, said to me: “Don’t you think it’s better to leave people to their dreams?” No-one supported the argument of the Diary, and this despite some rather pitiful explanations furnished by the museum’s flyers or its inscriptions.

15) These explanations are:

1. The “enemies” present in one of the rooms of the front house believed that the windows looking onto the little courtyard looked directly onto the garden; they were thus unaware of the very existence of an annex; and, if they were unaware of that, it was because the windows were obscured by black paper so as to assure the preservation of the spices stored inside;
2. As regards the Germans, they had never thought of the existence of an annex, “since they didn’t know this kind of house”;
3. The smoke from the stove “did not draw attention since in former times this room (where it was situated) served as a laboratory for the little factory, where a stove likewise had to burn every day”.

The first two of these three explanations come from a 36-page publication, without title and without date, printed by Koersen, Amsterdam. The last comes from the four-page flyer available at the museum’s entrance. The content of these two pieces of printed matter has received the endorsement of Mr Otto Frank. But in all three cases these explanations have not the least value. The annex was visible and tangible in a hundred ways via the ground floor (forbidden to visitors), the garden, the connecting corridors on four levels, the two windows of the office looking onto the courtyard, the nearby houses. Some of the “enemies” even had to go there to answer the call of nature because there was nothing for that in the front house. The ground floor of the rear house even received customers of the business. As for the “little factory” supposed to have existed “in former times”, right in the heart of this residential and commercial neighbourhood, it is supposed to have, for at least two years, stopped giving off smoke, then, suddenly, on 30 October 1942, to have begun giving off smoke again. And what smoke! Day and night! Winter and summer, heatwave or not. In the view of all (and, in particular, of “enemies” like Lewin, who used to have his chemist’s laboratory there), the “little factory” had restarted work! But why did Mr Frank strain his wits to find this explanation when, in other parts of the book, the annex is already described as a sort of ghost-house?

16) In conclusion on this point, I would say that, unless I am wrong in refusing to accord any value to these “explanations,” we are entitled to assert:

1. That some facts, very grave for Mr Otto Frank, remain unexplained;
2. That Mr Otto Frank is capable of making up stories, even crude and mediocre ones, like those I have pointed out in my critical reading of the Diary. I ask the reader to bear this conclusion in mind; he will see, further on, what answer Mr Frank personally gave me, in the presence of his wife.

17) For the photographic documentation concerning the “Anne Frank House”, see below after the French editor’s postscript.

 

Chapter III

Interview with the principal witness: Mr Otto Frank

18) This dialogue proved damning for the father of Anne Frank.

19) I had made it known to Mr Frank that I was preparing with my students a study of the Diary. I had made it clear that my specialty was the criticism of texts and documents and that I needed an extended interview. Mr Frank granted me that interview with eagerness, and it was thus that I was received at his residence in Birsfelden, a suburb of Basel, first on 24 March 1977, from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., then from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. and, finally, the next day, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Actually, on the next day the meeting place had been arranged to be in a bank in Basel. Mr Frank was keen to take out of a safe deposit box, in my presence, what he called his daughter’s manuscripts. Our interview was therefore conducted that day in part at the bank, in part on the way back to Birsfelden and, in part, once more, at Mr Frank’s residence. All the interviews at his residence were in the presence of his wife (his second wife, since the first died in deportation – from typhus it seems, as did Margot and Anne). After the first minute of our interview, I stated point blank to Mr and Mrs Frank that I had doubts about the authenticity of the Diary. Mr Frank showed no surprise. He declared his readiness to supply me with all of information I wanted. I was struck, during those two days, by Mr Frank’s extreme amiability. In spite of his age – 88 – he never used the pretext of his weariness to shorten our interview. In the Diary he is described as a man full of charm (see 2 March 1944). He inspires confidence. He knows how to anticipate people’s unexpressed desires. He adapts to situations remarkably well. He willingly adopts an argumentation on the basis of feelings. He speaks much of tolerance and understanding. I only once saw him lose his temper and show himself to be uncompromising and violent: it was with regard to the Zionist cause, which must seem sacred to him. Thus it was that he told me he would never again set foot on French soil because, in his opinion, France is no longer interested in anything but Arab oil and doesn’t care at all about Israel. On only three points did Mr Frank fail to keep his promise to answer my questions. It is interesting to know that the three points involved were the following:

1. the address of Elli, in Holland;
2. how to find the trace of the shopworker called, in the book, V. M. (and whose name, I know, was probably Van Maaren);
3. how to find the Austrian Karl Silberbauer who had arrested the persons in hiding on 4 August 1944.

20) As regards Elli, Mr Frank told me she was quite ill and that, “not very intelligent”, she could be of no help to me. As for the two other witnesses, they had had enough trouble as it was, without my going to pester them with questions that would remind them of an painful past. In contrast, Mr Frank recommended that I get in touch with Kraler (real name: Kugler), settled in Canada, and with Miep and her husband, still residing in Amsterdam.

21) With regard to the Diary itself, Mr Frank stated that the substance of it was authentic. The events related were true. It was Anne, and Anne alone, who had written the manuscripts of that Diary. Like any literary author, Anne perhaps had tendencies towards either exaggeration or imaginative transformation, but all within ordinary and acceptable limits, the factual truth not suffering from them. Anne’s manuscripts formed a significant whole. What Mr Frank had submitted to the publishers was not the text of these manuscripts, the purely original text, but a text that he, in person, had typewritten: a “typescript.” He had been obliged to transform in this way the various manuscripts into a single “typescript” for diverse reasons. First, the manuscripts presented repetitions. Then, they contained some indiscretions. Then, there were passages of no interest. Finally, there were… omissions! Mr Frank, noticing my surprise, gave me the following example (doubtless an innocuous example, but were there perhaps more serious ones that he was hiding from me?): Anne liked her uncles very much but in her diary she had neglected to mention them among the people she held dear; so, Mr Frank repaired that “omission” by mentioning the uncles in the “typescript”. Mr Frank told me he had changed dates! He had likewise changed the names of individuals. It was Anne herself, it seems, who had no doubt thought of these name changes. She had envisaged the possibility of publication. Mr Frank had found, on a bit of paper, the list of the real names with their matching false names. Anne would even have imagined calling the Franks by the name Robin. Mr Frank had cut out of the manuscripts certain specifications of the prices of things. Better: finding himself, at least for certain periods, with two different versions of the text before him, he had had to “combine” (the word is his) two texts into one single text. Summarising all those transformations, Mr Frank finally told me: “It was a difficult task. I did that task according to my conscience.”

22) The manuscripts that Mr Frank presented to me as being those of his daughter form an impressive whole. I did not have the time to look at them closely. I trusted in the description that was given me and shall summarise them as follows:

1. the first date mentioned is 12 June 1942; the last is 1 August 1944 (three days before the arrest);
2. for the period from 12 June to 5 December 1942 (but this date does not correspond to any printed letter), there is a small notebook covered in cloth with a red, white and brown pattern (the “Scotch notebook”);
3. for the period from 6 December 1942 to 21 December 1943, there is no particular notebook (but see, further on, the “loose leaf sheets”). This notebook is said to have been lost;
4. for the period from 2 December 1942 to 17 April 1944, then for the period from that same date of 17 April (!) to the last letter (1 August 1944); two black, cardboard-bound notebooks in brown paper book covers.

23) To these three notebooks and the missing one is added a collection of 338 loose leaf sheets for the period from 20 June 1942 to 29 March 1944. Mr Frank says that these sheets constitute a resumption and a reorganising, by Anne herself, of letters contained, in a first form, in the aforementioned notebooks: the “Scotch notebook,” the missing notebook, the first of the two black notebooks.

24) Up to this point the total of what Anne is supposed to have written during her twenty-five months in hiding is, therefore, in five volumes. To that total it is fitting to add the collection of the Stories. These Stories are said to have been made up by Anne. The text is presented as a finished edit. This edit can only imply, to begin with, editing work on a draft; Anne therefore must have blackened a lot of paper!

25) I have no competence as regards handwriting analysis and thus cannot express an opinion on the subject. I can only give my impressions here. My impressions were that the “Scotch notebook” contained photos, images and drawings as well as a variety of very childish handwritings, whose disorder and fancy appear authentic. One would have to look closely at the handwriting of the texts taken by Mr Frank to form the beginning of the Diary. The other notebooks and the whole of the 338 loose leaf sheets are in what I would call: an adult handwriting. As for the manuscript of the Stories, it greatly surprised me. One would call it the work of an seasoned chartered accountant and not the work of a child of 14. The table of contents is presented as a register of the Stories with, for each piece, the date of composition, the title and the page number!

26) Mr Frank sets great store by the conclusions of the two expert analyses called for, towards 1960, by the Lübeck public prosecutor in order to examine the case of a teacher (Lothar Stielau) who, in 1959, had expressed doubts about the Diary‘s authenticity (Case 2js 19/59, VU 10/59). Mr Frank had brought a lawsuit against that teacher. The analyses of the handwriting had been entrusted to Mrs Minna Becker. Mrs Annemarie Hübner, for her part, had been tasked with telling whether the texts printed in Dutch and in German were faithful to the text of the manuscript. The two expert reports, submitted as evidence in 1961, turned out favourable for Mr Frank.

27) But, on the other hand, what Mr Frank did not reveal to me – and what I was to learn well after my visit and through a German contact – is that the prosecutor in Lübeck had decided to have a third analysis made. Why a third analysis? And on what point, given that, to all appearances, the entire field susceptible to investigation was explored by the handwriting expert and by Mrs Hübner? The answer to these questions is as follows: the prosecutor realised that an analysis of the kind made by Mrs Hübner risked finding that Lothar Stielau was, in actual fact, right. In view of the first analyses, it was going to be impossible to declare that the Diary was dokumentarisch echt (documentarily authentic) (!). Perhaps it could have been declared literarisch echt (literarily authentic) (!). The novelist Friedrich Sieburg would be tasked with answering that curious question.

28) Of those three expert reports only Mrs Hübner’s would really have been of interest to me. On 20 January 1978 a letter from Mrs Hübner led me to hope I would obtain a copy of her report. Shortly afterwards, with Mrs Hübner not answering my letters, I had a German friend telephone her. She had him know that “the matter was very delicate, given that a trial on the question of the Diary was currently under way in Frankfurt”. She added that she had got in touch with Mr Frank. According to the few elements I possess of the content of that expert report, it apparently noted a great number of facts that are interesting from the standpoint of a comparison of the texts (manuscripts, “typescript,” Dutch text, German text). Mrs Hübner seems to have mentioned very numerous “omissions” (Auslassungen), “additions” (Zusätze), “interpolations” (Interpolationen). She apparently spoke of a text “revised” for the necessities of publication (überarbeitet). Furthermore, she seems to have gone so far as to name persons who supposedly gave their “collaboration” (Zusammenarbeit) to Mr Frank in his drafting of the “typescript.” Those persons would be Isa Cauvern and her husband Albert Cauvern. Mrs Anneliese Schütz, for her part, is supposed to have collaborated in establishing the German text, instead of contenting herself with the role of translator.

29) Despite these facts that she herself revealed, Mrs Hübner supposedly concluded that the Diary (Dutch printed text and German printed text) was authentic. Thus she seems to have expressed the following opinion: “These facts are not serious.” That judgment can only be her own. There is the whole question. Who guarantees us that another judgment entirely could not be pronounced on the facts signalled by the expert? And then, to begin, has the expert shown impartiality and a really scientific spirit in calling the facts as she has called them? What she calls, for example, “interpolations” (a word scientific in appearance and ambiguous in scope) would others not call “retouchings,” “reworkings,” “intercalations” (words doubtless more exact, and more precise)? In the same manner, words like “additions” and, especially, “omissions” are neutral in appearance but, in reality, they conceal confused realities: an “addition” or an “omission” can be honest or dishonest; it can change nothing important in a text or it can, to the contrary, alter it profoundly. In the particular case that interests us here, those two words have a frankly benign appearance!

30) In any event it is impossible to see those three expert opinions (of Becker, Hübner and Sieburg) as having probative value, given that they were not examined in court. Indeed, for reasons of which I am unaware, Mr Frank was to withdraw his suit against Lothar Stielau. If my information is accurate, the latter agreed to pay 1,000 marks of the 15,712 marks of the costs of the action. I suppose Mr Frank paid the court of Lübeck that 1,000 marks and that he added to that sum 14,712 marks for his own part. I believe I recall Mr Frank’s telling me that Lothar Stielau had, besides, agreed to offer him his written apology. Lothar Stielau, at the same time, had lost his teaching job. Mr Frank did not talk to me about Lothar Stielau’s co-defendant: Heinrich Buddeberg. Perhaps that man too had to pay 1,000 marks and offer his apologies.

31) I dwell here on these matters of expert opinions only because in our interview Mr Frank had himself dwelt on them, while not mentioning certain important facts (for example, the existence of a third analysis), and while presenting to me the two expert opinions as conclusive. The matter of the manuscripts did not interest me very much either. I knew I would not have the time to examine them closely. What interested me most of all was to know how Mr Frank would explain to me the “inexplicable quantity of implausible or inconceivable facts” that I had discerned in reading the Diary. After all, what did it matter to me that manuscripts, even declared authentic by experts, contained facts of this kind if those facts could not be real? However, Mr Frank was to prove incapable of furnishing me with the least explanation. As I see it, he was expecting to see the authenticity of the Diary questioned by the usual arguments of a psychological, literary or historical order. He did not expect arguments of internal criticism bearing on the realities of material life: the realities which, as one knows, are “stubborn”. In a moment of disarray Mr Frank, moreover, was to declare to me: “But… I never thought about those material matters!”

32) Before addressing precise examples of that disarray I owe it to the truth to say that twice Mr Frank was to give me a good answer, and in regard to two episodes that I have not mentioned up to now, precisely because they were to find an explanation. I had found the first episode incomprehensible because of a small omission in the French translation (I did not possess, at that time, the Dutch text). The second episode was incomprehensible due to an error present in all the printed texts of the Diary. Where, at the date of 8 July 1944, there is a male greengrocer, the manuscript has: “la marchande de légumes” (the female greengrocer). And this is fortunate, for the careful reader knows quite well that the greengrocer in question could not have delivered to those in hiding “19 pounds of green peas” (!) on 8 July 1944 for the good reason that he had been arrested 45 days before by the Germans for the gravest of reasons (“He was hiding two Jews in his house”). That had put him “on the edge of an abyss” (25 May 1944). It was hard to conceive how a greengrocer leapt from “the abyss” in order to deliver to other Jews such a quantity of compromising goods. To tell the truth, it is hardly more conceivable on the part of the unfortunate man’s wife but the fact is there: the text of the manuscript is not absurd like that of the Dutch, French, German, and English printings. The drafting of the manuscript had been done more tidily. The possibility remains that the error of the printed texts was perhaps not an error, but indeed a deliberate and unfortunate correction of the manuscript. In effect, the printed Dutch text reads: “[…] van der groenteboer om de hoek, 19 pond” [cries Margot]; and Anne replies: “Dat is aarding van hem.” In other words, Margot and Anne use the masculine twice: “from the local [male] greengrocer, 19 pounds”. Anne’s reply: “That’s nice of him.” For my part, I would draw two other conclusions from this episode:

1. Internal criticism bearing on a text’s consistency makes it possible to detect anomalies that prove to be true anomalies;
2. A reader of the Diary, having come to this episode of 8 July 1944, will be entitled to state that a book in which one of the heroes (“the nice local greengrocer”) rises from the depths of the abyss as one resuscitates from the dead is absurd.

33) That greengrocer, Mr Frank told me, was called Van der Hoeven. Deported for having sheltered Jews in his house, he returned from deportation. During commemorative ceremonies, he has sometimes appeared beside Mr Frank. I asked Mr Frank whether, after the war, people from the neighbourhood had remarked to him: “We suspected there were people hiding at 263 Prinsengracht.” Mr Frank answered explicitly that no-one had suspected their presence, neither the men of the shop, nor Lewin, nor Van der Hoeven. The last had supposedly helped them without knowing it!

34) Despite my repeated questions on the point, Mr Frank was unable to tell me what his neighbours at no. 261 sold or made. He did not remember that there had been in his own house, at no. 263, a cleaning woman described in the book as a potential “enemy.” He ended up answering that she was “very, very old” and that she came only very rarely, perhaps once a week. I said that she must have been astonished on suddenly seeing the installation of the “swinging bookcase” on the second floor landing. He replied no, given that the cleaning woman never went by there. This answer was to trigger, for the first time, something of an altercation between Mr Frank and his wife, who was present at our interview. Before this, in effect, I had taken the precaution of having Mr Frank specify that the persons in hiding had never done any housekeeping apart from cleaning a part of the annex. The logical conclusion of Mr Frank’s two statements thus became: “For twenty-five months, no-one did any cleaning on the second floor landing.” In the face of this implausibility, Mrs Frank suddenly intervened, saying to her husband: “Come on! No cleaning on that landing! In a factory! But there would have been dust this high!” What Mrs Frank might have added is that that landing was supposed to serve as a passageway for those in hiding in their comings and goings between the annex and the front house. The trail of their goings and comings would have been obvious in so much accumulated dust. And this with no account taken of the dust from the coal carried up from below. In fact, Mr Frank could not be telling the truth when he spoke in that way of a sort of ghost of a cleaning woman for so big and dirty a house.

35) Several times, at the beginning of our interview, Mr Frank thus attempted to supply explanations which, in the end, explained nothing at all and, instead, led him into impasses. I must say here that his wife’s  presence was to prove especially useful. Mrs Frank, who was very well acquainted with the Diary, manifestly believed up to then in the Diary‘s authenticity as well as in her husband’s sincerity. Her surprise was only more striking in the face of the execrable quality of his answers to my questions. For my part, I retain a painful memory of what I would call certain “realisations” by Mrs Frank. I do not at all wish to say that Mrs Frank today takes her husband for a liar. But I do maintain that Mrs Frank was strongly conscious, during our interview, of the anomalies and grave absurdities of the whole Anne Frank story. On hearing her husband’s “explanations” she happened to utter, in his regard, such phrases and sentences as:

“Come on!”

“What you’re saying is unbelievable!”

“A vacuum cleaner! That’s unbelievable! I’d never noticed it!”

“But you were really reckless!”

“That, really – that was reckless!”

The most interesting remark that Mrs Frank made was the following: “I’m sure the people (of the neighbourhood) knew you were there.” For my part, I would say rather: “I’m sure that the people of the neighbourhood would have seen, heard and smelled the presence of the persons in hiding, if indeed there were persons hiding in that house for twenty-five months.”

36) I would take one other example of Mr Frank’s explanations. According to him, the people who worked in the front house could not see the body of the annex because of the “masking paper on the window panes”. This statement, which is found in the museum flyer, was repeated to me by Mr Frank in his wife’s presence. Without dwelling on this, I went on to another subject: that of electricity consumption. I pointed out that use of electricity in the house had to be considerable. Since Mr Frank was surprised by my remark, I specified: “It had to be considerable because the light was on all day in the office on the courtyard and in the shop on the front house’s courtyard.” Mr Frank said to me: “How do you mean? The electric light isn’t needed in broad daylight!” I pointed out that those spaces could not receive daylight, given that the windows had “masking paper” over them. He replied that they were still not in the dark: a disconcerting reply, one in contradiction with the statement in the booklet written by Mr Frank: “Spices must be kept in the dark” (page 27 of the aforementioned 36-page booklet). Mr Frank then presumed to add that, anyhow, all that could be made out through the windows on the courtyard was a wall. He specified, contrary to the obvious, that one did not see that it was the wall of a house! This specification contradicted the following passage in the same booklet: “therefore, although you saw windows, you could not see through them, and everyone took it for granted that they gave onto the garden” (ibidem). I asked whether those masked windows were, nonetheless, sometimes open, if only for airing out the office where visitors were received, if only in the summer, on torrid days. Mrs Frank agreed with me there and remarked that those windows had, all the same, to have been open sometimes. Silence from Mr Frank.

37) The list of the noises left Mr and, especially, Mrs Frank perplexed. As regards the vacuum cleaner, Mr Frank started and declared: “But there couldn’t be a vacuum cleaner.” Then, in the face of my assurance that there had been one, he began to stutter. He told me that, if there was really a vacuum cleaner, they must have used it in the evening, when the employees (the “enemies”) had left the front house, after work. I objected that the noise of a vacuum cleaner of that era would have been heard by the neighbours all the better (the walls were “thin” – 25 March 1943) as it would have been made in empty spaces or in the proximity of empty spaces. I revealed to him that, in any case, Mrs Van Daan, for her part, was supposed to have used the vacuum cleaner every day, regularly, at around 12.30 p.m. (the window probably being open). Silence from Mr Frank, whereas Mrs Frank was visibly moved. The same silence for the alarm clock, which sometimes rang at the wrong hour (4 August 1943). The same silence for the removal of the ashes, especially on very hot days. The same silence about those in hiding helping themselves from the store of coal (a rare commodity), common to the whole house. Same silence on the matter of the bicycles used after being confiscated and after prohibition of their use by Jews.

38) A number of questions thus remained unanswered or else, at first, gave rise to explanations by which Mr Frank aggravated his case. Then Mr Frank had, as it were, a brainwave: a magic formula. That formula was as follows: “Mr Faurisson, you are theoretically and scientifically right. I agree with you 100%…. What you point out to me was, in effect, impossible. But, in practice, that was still the way in which things happened.” I remarked that his statement troubled my mind. I told him it was a bit as though he agreed with me that a door cannot at-the-same-time-be- open-and-closed and as though, despite that, he stated that he had seen such a door. I pointed out, besides, that the words “scientifically” and “theoretically” and “in practice” were unnecessary and introduced a distinction devoid of meaning for, in any case, “theoretical,” “scientific” or “practical”, a door at-the-same-time-open-and-closed quite simply cannot exist. I added that I would prefer, for each particular question, an appropriate response or, should he prefer, no answer at all.

39) Towards the start of our interview Mr Frank had made, in the friendliest way in the world, a capital concession, a concession announced by me above in section 16. As I was beginning to have him understand that I found the explanations he had furnished in his booklets absurd, as regards both the Germans’ ignorance of the typical architecture of Dutch houses and the constant presence of smoke above the annex (the “little factory”), he wanted to admit right away, without any insistence on my part, that it was a matter there of pure inventions of his. Without using, it is true, the word inventions, he stated, in substance: “You’re completely right. In the explanations given to visitors, one has to simplify. That’s not so serious. One has to make that agreeable to the visitors. It’s not the scientific way. One isn’t always fortunate enough to be able to be scientific.”

40) That remark in confidence enlightens us on what I believe to be a character trait of Mr Frank: Mr Frank has the sense of what the public likes and he seeks to adapt himself accordingly, even if it means taking liberties with the truth. Mr Frank is not a man to worry himself too much. He knows that the general public is content with little. The public seeks a sort of comfort, of dream, of easy world where it will be served exactly the kind of emotion that strengthens it in its habits of feeling, seeing and reasoning. That smoke above the roof might unsettle the public? No problem! Let’s invent an explanation not necessarily plausible, but simple and, if need be, simple and crude. Perfection is attained if that invention panders to conventional wisdom or habitual sentiments: for instance, it is quite probable that for those who love Anne Frank and who come to visit her house, the Germans are brutes and beasts; well, they will find a confirmation of that in Mr Frank’s explanations: the Germans went so for as to be unaware of the architecture typical of Amsterdam houses (sic!). In a general way, Mr Frank appeared to me, more than once, as a man devoid of finesse (but not of trickery) and for whom a literary work is, compared with reality, a form of lying invention, a field where one takes liberties with the truth, a thing that “is not so serious” and makes it possible to write practically anything.

41) I asked Mr Frank what explanations he could offer on the two points where he concurred that he had said nothing serious to the visitors. He was unable to answer me. I questioned him on the layout of the premises. I had noted anomalies in the house’s floor plan such as it is reproduced by Mr Frank – in all the editions of the Diary. Those anomalies had been confirmed for me by my visit to the museum (with account taken of the changes made in the premises in order to make a museum of them). It was then that, once again, Mr Frank was led, in the face of the obvious physical reality, to make some new and serious concessions to me, particularly, as will be seen, with regard to the “swinging bookcase”. He began by admitting that the floor plan diagram should not have concealed the fact that the small courtyard separating the front house from the annex was common to no. 263 (the Frank house) and to no. 265 (the house of their neighbours and “enemies”); besides, it is bizarre that, in the Diary, there was not the slightest allusion to this fact which, for the persons in hiding, was of extreme gravity. Mr Frank then acknowledged that the diagram suggested that on the third floor the open air passageway was not accessible; however, that passageway was accessible by a door from the annex and it could very well have offered the police or the “enemies” an easy way of access to the very heart of the spaces inhabited by those in hiding. Lastly and above all, Mr Frank conceded that the “swinging bookcase” made no sense. He recognised that this cosmetic change could not, in any case, have prevented a search of the annex, since the annex was accessible by other ways and, notably, by the most natural way: the entrance door giving onto the garden. This obvious fact, it is true, will not appear to one viewing the diagram, for the diagram contains no drawing of the whole ground floor. As for the museum visitors, they do not have access to that ground floor. That famous “bookcase” thus becomes a particularly aberrant invention of “the persons in hiding”. One must, in effect, suspect here that the making of that “bookcase” was a perilous task. The destruction of the stair steps, the assembling of that false bookcase, the transforming of a passageway into an apparent dead end, all that could only arouse the “enemies’” suspicions. All that had therefore been suggested by Kraler and executed by Vossen (21 August 1942)!

42) The more my interview went on, the more Mr Frank’s embarrassment was visible. But his amiability did not wane; on the contrary. Towards the end, Mr Frank was to use a sentimental line of argument, apparently clever and in a good natured tone. That line was the following: “Yes, I grant you that, we were a bit imprudent. Certain things were a bit dangerous, it must be acknowledged. Besides, that’s perhaps the reason why we were finally arrested. But don’t think, Mr Faurisson, that the people were suspicious to that extent.” This curious line of argument would lead him to make such remarks as: “The people were kind!” or: “The Dutch were good!”, or even, on two occasions: “The police were good!”

43) These remarks had only one disadvantage: they rendered all the “precautions” pointed out in the book absurd. To some degree, they even took away the whole sense of the book. The book recounts, in effect, the tragic adventure of eight persons who are hunted, obliged to hide, to bury themselves alive for twenty-five months in the midst of a ferociously hostile world. In those “days in the tomb” only a few elite beings knew of their existence and brought them help. It may be said that in resorting to his last arguments Mr Frank was attempting, with one hand, to stop up the cracks in a work that, with the other hand, he was dismantling.

44) On the evening of our first day of interviews, Mr Frank handed me his own copy, in French, of the book by Ernst Schnabel, Spur eines Kindes (French title: Sur les traces d’Anne Frank; English title: Anne Frank: A Portrait in Courage). He told me I would perhaps find in it answers to some of my questions. The pages of that copy had not been separated. It must be mentioned that Mr Frank speaks and understands French but reads it with a little difficulty. (I specify here that all our interviews took place in English, a language that Mr Frank masters perfectly.) I had not yet read that book, because strict observance of the methods proper to pure internal criticism entails an obligation to read nothing about a work so long as one has not yet personally got a clear idea of it. During the night that preceded our second interview I browsed through the book. Among the ten or so points that would confirm for me that the Diary was a pure fabrication (and this notwithstanding Schnabel’s many efforts to persuade us of the contrary), I noted, on page 151, a stupefying passage. This passage concerned Mr Vossen, the man who, it seemed, had dedicated his energies as a carpenter for the making of the “swinging bookcase” meant to conceal the persons in hiding (Diary, 21 August 1942). The “good Vossen” was supposed to work at 263 Prinsengracht. He kept the persons in hiding informed on everything that happened in the shop. But illness had forced him to stay at home, where his daughter Elli joined him after working hours. On 15 June 1943 Anne speaks of him as a precious friend. However, according to a remark of Elli reported by Schnabel, the good Vossen… was unaware of the Franks’ existence at 263 Prinsengracht! Elli recounts, in fact, that on 4 August 1944, when arriving at home, she informed her father of the Franks’ arrest. “I sat on the edge of the bed and told him everything. My father very much liked Mr Frank, whom he had known for a long time. He was not aware that the Franks had not left for Switzerland, as was claimed, but had gone into hiding on the Prinsengracht.” But what is incomprehensible is that Vossen could have believed that rumour. For nearly a year he had been able to see the Franks at Prinsengracht, to speak with them, help them, befriend them. Then, when due to bad health he had left his job on the Prinsengracht, his daughter Elli was able to keep him informed of the doings of his friends, the Franks.

45) Mr Frank could not explain that passage from Schnabel’s book. Rushing to the German and the English texts of the same book, he made a surprising discovery: the whole passage where Elli spoke with her father did indeed appear in those texts, but… without the sentence beginning “He was not aware” and ending with “the Prinsengracht”. In the French text, Elli continued: “II ne dit rien. Il restait couché en silence.” For comparison, here is the German text:

Ich setze mich zu ihm ans Bett und habe ihm alles gesagt. Er hing sehr an Herrn Frank, denn er kannte ihn lange [passage missing]. Gesagt hat er nichts. Er hat nur dagelegen. (Anne Frank/Ein Bericht von Ernst Schnabel, Spur eines Kindes, Fischer Bucherei, 1958, 168 pages, page 115.)

And here is the English text:

I sat down beside his bed and told him everything. He was deeply attached to Mr Frank, who he had known a long time [passage missing]. He said nothing. (Anne Frank: A Portrait in Courage, Ernst Schnabel, Translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston. Harbrace Paperback Library, Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., New York 1958; 181 pages; page 132.)

46) Once back in France, it was easy for me to clear up this mystery: from many other points in the French text it became evident that there had existed two original German versions. Schnabel’s first version must have been sent in “typescript” to the French publishing house Albin Michel so that a translation into French could be prepared without losing time. Thereupon Schnabel or, very probably, Mr Frank, had proceeded to do a revision of his text. He had then eliminated the contentious sentence about Vossen. Then Fischer published that corrected version. But, in France, efforts had been redoubled and the book was already leaving the presses. It was too late to correct it. I note, moreover, a bibliographical curiosity: my copy of Sur les traces d’Anne Frank (translated from the German by Marthe Metzger, Albin Michel, Paris 1958, 205 pages) bears the mention of “18^th thousand” and its printing date was February 1958. However, the first thousand of the original German edition is from März 1958. Thus the translation did indeed appear before the original.

47) It remains, of course, to be known why Ernst Schnabel or Mr Frank had deemed it proper to make that astonishing correction. Nonetheless Mr Frank showed his disarray once more in the face of this further anomaly. We took leave of each other in a most painful atmosphere, where each testimony of friendliness shown by Mr Frank made me a bit more uneasy. Shortly after my return to France I wrote to thank him for his hospitality and to ask him Elli’s address. He answered me amiably, asking me to send him the French copy of Schnabel’s book, and without saying anything about Elli. I sent him back his copy, asking anew for the address. No answer this time. I telephoned him at Birsfelden. He replied that he would not give me that address, all the less as I had sent Kraler (Kugler) an “idiotic” letter. I shall return to that letter.

 

Chapter IV

48) Bibliographical examination: curious silences and curious revelations.

49) The aforementioned book by Schnabel (Anne Frank: A Portrait in Courage) has some curious omissions, while the long article, unsigned, that Der Spiegel devoted to the Diary in the wake of the Stielau case (1 April 1959, pages 51-55), brings us some curious revelations. The title is eloquent: “Anne Frank. Was Schrieb das Kind?” (Anne Frank. What did the child write?)

50) Ernst Schnabel openly defends Anne Frank and Otto Frank. His book is relatively rich on all that precedes and on all that follows the twenty-five months of their life at Prinsengracht. In contrast, it is extremely poor concerning those twenty-five months. One would say that the direct witnesses (Miep, Elli, Kraler, Koophuis, Henk) have nothing to declare on that period of capital importance. Why do they remain silent in this way? Why have they said only some commonplace things like “[…] when we had our plate of soup upstairs with them at noon” (page 114) or “We always had lunch together” (page 117)? Not one concrete detail, not one description, not one anecdote is there that, by its preciseness, would give the impression that the persons in hiding and their faithful friends regularly shared the same table at noon. Everything appears in a kind of fog. However, those witnesses were questioned only thirteen years, at the most, after the arrest of the Franks, and some of them, such as Elli, Miep and Henk, were still young. I am not talking about numerous other persons whom Schnabel wrongly calls “witnesses” but who, in fact, had never known or even met the Franks. This is the case, for example, with the famous “greengrocer” (Gemüsemann). “He did not know the Franks at all” (page 82). In a general way, the impression that I get from reading Schnabel’s book is the following: this Anne Frank really existed; she was a little young girl without great character, without strong personality, without precociousness at school (to the contrary even) and in whom no-one suspected any aptitude for writing; that unfortunate child experienced the war’s horrors; she was arrested by the Germans; she was interned, then deported; she went through the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp; she was separated from her father; her mother died in the Birkenau infirmary on 6 January 1945; she and her sister, in or about October 1944, were transferred to Bergen-Belsen; Margot died of typhus; then, in her turn, Anne, alone in the world, was also to die of typhus in March of 1945. There we have points about which the witnesses did not hesitate to talk. But with all of them one senses mistrust before an Anne of legend, able to take up the pen as we are told, to keep that Diary and write those Stories, and to draft “a beginning of a novel”, etc. Schnabel himself writes, revealingly: “My witnesses had a good deal to say about Anne as a person; they took account of the legend only with great reticence, or by tacitly ignoring it. Although they did not take issue with it by so much as a word, I had the impression that they were checking themselves. All of them read Anne’s diary; they did not mention it” (pages 4-5). That last sentence is important: “All of them had read Anne’s diary; they did not mention it.” Even Kraler, who sent a long letter to Schnabel from Toronto, made no mention either of the Diary or of Anne’s other writings (page 87). Kraler is the only direct witness to tell an anecdote or two about Anne; however, in a very curious way, he places these anecdotes in the period where the Franks still lived in their apartment on Merwedeplein, before their “disappearance” (“before they went into hiding,” page 87). It is only in the corrected edition that the second anecdote is placed at Prinsengracht, even “when they were in the secret annex” (page 88). The witnesses did not want their names to be published. The two most important witnesses (the “probable betrayer” and the Austrian policeman) were neither questioned nor even sought. Schnabel makes several attempts to explain this curious avoidance (pages 8, 139 and all of the end of chapter ten). He goes so far as to present a sort of defence of the arresting policeman! One person [Mrs Kuperus] nevertheless does, all the same, mention the Diary, but this is to draw attention to a point that seems bizarre to her concerning the Montessori school of which she was headmistress (page 40). Schnabel himself deals with the Diary curiously. How to explain, in effect, the cuts that he makes when citing a passage like that of his page 123? Giving a long excerpt from the letter of 11 April 1944 in which Anne recounts the police raid in the wake of the burglary, he leaves out the sentence where Anne states the main reason for her anxiety: it is that the police, it seems, went so far as to give the “bookcase” some loud jolts. (“This, and when the police rattled the bookcase door, were my worst moments.”) Would Schnabel not have thought, like any man of sense, that that passage was absurd? In any case, he tells us that he visited 263 Prinsengracht before its transformation into a museum. He did not see any “swinging bookcase” there. He writes: “The bookcase that was built against the door to disguise it has been pulled down. Nothing is left but the twisted hinges hanging beside the door.” (page 74) He found no trace of any special camouflage but only, in Anne’s room, a yellowed piece of curtain (“A tattered, yellowed remnant of curtain still hangs at the window” (page 75). Mr Frank, it seems, marked in pencil on the wallpaper, near a door, the successive heights of his daughters. Today, at the museum, visitors can see an impeccable square of wallpaper, kept under glass, where the perfectly preserved pencil marks, which appear to have been made the same day, are to be noted. We are told that these pencil marks indicated the heights of Mr Frank’s children. When I saw Mr Frank at Birsfelden I asked him whether this was not a “reconstitution”. He assured me that it was all authentic. This is difficult to believe. Schnabel, for his part, simply saw, as a mark, an “A 42” which he interprets as “Anne 1942.” What is curious is that the museum’s “authentic” paper bears nothing of the kind. Schnabel does say that he saw only that mark and that the others were destroyed or torn off (“the other marks have been stripped off” [ibidem].) Might Mr Frank have rendered himself guilty here of a trick (ein Trick), like the one he suggested to Henk and Miep for the photocopy of their passport?

A very interesting point about Anne’s story is that which concerns the manuscripts. I regret to say that I find the account of their discovery, and then of their passing on to Mr Frank by his secretary Miep, implausible. The police supposedly scattered all sorts of papers on the floor. Among those papers, Miep and Elli are said to have gathered up a “Scotch notebook” (ein rotkariertes Buch; a red plaid book) and a number of other papers on which they recognised Anne’s handwriting. They supposedly read none of these. They are supposed to have put all these papers away in the big desk. Then, these papers were allegedly handed over to Mr Frank on his return from Poland (pages 179-181). This account does not square at all with the account of the arrest. The arrest was made slowly, methodically, correctly, just like the search. The testimonies are unanimous on this point (see Chapter IX). After the arrest the policeman returned to the premises several times. He questioned Miep in particular. The police wanted to know whether the Franks were in contact with other persons in hiding. The Diary, such as we know it, would have revealed, at a brief glance, a load of information of great value to the police and terribly compromising for Miep, Elli and all the friends of those in hiding. The police could have disregarded the “Scotch notebook” if, in its original state, it contained, as I think, only some drawings, photographs or notes of an innocuous nature. But it would seem implausible for them to leave several notebooks and several hundred scattered sheets on which the writing was, at least in appearance, that of an adult. As for Elli and Miep, it would have been madness on their part to gather together and keep, especially in the desk, such a mass of compromising documents. They knew, it seems, that Anne was keeping a diary. In a diary one is expected to recount what happens day to day. Consequently there was a risk that Anne mentioned Miep and Elli in them.

51) Regarding Schnabel’s book, Mr Frank had made a surprising revelation to me. He had told me that the book, although translated into several languages, had not been translated into Dutch! The reason for this exception was that the principal witnesses lived in Holland and, out of both modesty and a preference for peace and quiet, they did not want people talking about them. In reality, Mr Frank was mistaken, or else he was deceiving me. An investigation conducted in Amsterdam would, at first, lead me to believe that Schnabel’s book had not been translated into Dutch. Even the Contact publishing house replied or had had others reply to several booksellers and private individuals that the book did not exist. I discovered then that, in a showcase at the museum, the book by Schnabel was said to have been translated and published in 1970 (twelve years after its publication in Germany, France and the United States!) under the title Haar laatste Levensmaanden (Her last months). The book, unfortunately, was impossible to find. Same replies from booksellers and from Contact publishers. By dint of my insistence, Contact finally replied that there remained only one archive copy. I got permission, not without difficulty, to consult it, and then to have photocopies of pages 263 to 304. For, in reality, the book in question contained only an excerpt from Schnabel’s book, reduced to 35 pages, and placed in appendix to the text of the Diary. The comparative study of Spur eines Kindes and of its “translation” into Dutch is of the greatest interest. Of the book by Schnabel the Dutch can read only the last five chapters (out of thirteen chapters in all). Moreover, three of those five chapters have undergone cuts of all sorts. Some of those cuts are indicated by ellipses. Others are not indicated at all. The chapters thus cut in pieces are IX, X and XIII, i.e. those that concern, on the one hand, the arrest and its direct aftermath (in the Netherlands) and, on the other hand, the story of the manuscripts. As soon as it is no longer a matter of those subjects, as it is a matter of the camps (which is the case in chapters XI and XII), the original text by Schnabel is respected. Examined closely, the cuts seem to have been made to remove the details that were the least bit telling that appeared in the testimonies of Koophuis, Miep, Henk and Elli. For example, it is missing, with nothing to indicate a cut, the crucial passage where Elli tells how she informed her father of the Franks’ arrest (the 13 lines of page 115 of Spur… are completely absent from page 272 of Haar Laatste Levensmaanden). It is an aberration that the only nation for whom a censored version of the life of Anne Frank has thus been reserved is precisely that nation where the adventure of Anne Frank had its inception. Can one imagine revelations about Joan of Arc being made to all sorts of foreign peoples, but forbidden, in a certain way, for the French people? Such a manner of proceeding is understandable only when publishers fear lest, in the country of origin, “revelations” appear rather quickly suspect. The explanation given by Mr Frank hardly holds. Since Koophuis, Miep, Henk and Elli find themselves named anyhow (and, besides, under complete or partial pseudonyms), and since Schnabel has them say such and such things, one fails to see how the cuts made amidst those remarks might cater to their touchy modesty or assure them more tranquility in their life in Amsterdam. Rather, I would believe that the drafting of the Dutch translation gave rise to very long and laborious negotiating amongst all the interested parties or, at least, between Mr Frank and some of them. The “witnesses”, of course, agreed to collaborate with Mr Frank but, over the years, they became more circumspect and stinting with details than in their original “testimonies”.

52) The aforementioned article in Der Spiegel brings us, as I have said, some curious revelations. By principle I distrust journalists. They work too quickly. Here, it is obvious that the journalist conducted a thorough investigation. The issue was too burning and delicate to be dealt with loosely. The finding of this long article could, in effect, be the following: while suspecting the Diary to be a forgery, Lothar Stielau perhaps proved nothing, but all the same he “ran into a really thorny problem – the problem of the genesis of the book’s publishing” (auf ein tatsächlich heikles Problem gestossen – das Problem der Enstehung der Buchausgabe, page 51). And it is revealed that we are very far from the text of the original manuscripts when we read in Dutch, German or in whatever language, the book entitled Diary of Anne Frank. Supposing for a moment that the manuscripts are authentic, one must be aware, indeed, that what we read under that title, for example in Dutch (i.e. in the supposed original language), is but the result of a whole series of reworking and rewriting jobs, done notably by Mr Frank and some close friends, amongst whom (for the Dutch text) Mr and Mrs Cauvern, and (for the German text) Anneliese Schütz, whose pupil Anne had been. 

53) Between the original state of the book (i.e. the manuscripts) and its printed state (the Dutch edition by Contact in 1947), the text went through at least five successive states.

1. between late May 1945 and October 1945 Mr Frank had drawn up a sort of copy (Abschrift) from the manuscripts, in part alone, in part with the aid of his secretary Isa Cauvern (the wife of Albert Cauvern, a friend of Mr Frank’s: before the war the Cauverns had hosted the Frank children at their house for holidays).
2. from October 1945 to January 1946 Mr Frank and Isa Cauvern worked together on a new version of the copy, a typewritten version (Neufassung der Abschrift/Maschinengeschriebene Zweitfassung).
3. at an unspecified date (end of the winter of 1945-1946), that second version (typewritten) was submitted to Albert Cauvern; as he was a radio man – a “reader” at the “De Vara” station in Hilversum – he was well versed in rewriting. According to his own words, he began by “largely changing” that version; he drew up his own text as a “man of experience” (Albert Cauvern stellt heute nicht in Abrede, dass er jene maschinengeschriebene Zweitfassung mit kundiger Hand redigiert hat: “Am Anfang habe ich ziemlich viel geändert”, page 52.) A surprising detail for a diary: he was not shy of grouping together under a single date letters written on different dates; at a second stage he confined himself to correcting the punctuation and the errors of wording and grammar; all those changes and corrections were made on the typewritten text; A. Cauvern never saw the original manuscripts.
4. starting from the changes and corrections, Mr Frank established what one may call the third typewritten text in the spring of 1946; he submitted the result to “three prominent experts” (drei prominente Gutachter, page 53), letting them believe that it was the complete reproduction of a manuscript, with the quite understandable exception of a few points of a personal nature; then, those three persons having apparently given their endorsement to the text, Mr Frank went on to offer it to several publishing houses in Amsterdam, which refused it; turning then, in all likelihood – but this point is not very clear –, to one of those three persons, Mrs Anna Romein-Verschoor, he got her husband, Mr Jan Romein, professor of Dutch history at the University of Amsterdam, to write in the daily Het Parool a resounding article that began with these words: “There has by chance fallen into my hands a diary [etc.]”. The article being very laudatory, a modest Amsterdam publishing house (Contact) asked to publish that diary.
5. with the agreement concluded or about to be concluded, Mr Frank went and found several “spiritual counsellors” (mehrere geistliche Ratgeber), amongst whom Pastor Buskes; he granted them full licence to censor the text (raumte ihnen freiwillig Zensoren-Befugnisse ein, pages 53-54). And that censorship was exercised.

54) But the oddities do not end there. The German text of the Diary is the subject of some interesting remarks on the part of the Der Spiegel journalist. He writes: “One curiosity of the ‘Anne Frank literature’ is Anneliese Schütz’s translation work, of which Schnabel said: ‘I wish all translations were so faithful’, but whose text very often diverges from the Dutch original” (page 54). Indeed, as I shall show further on (sections 72-103), the journalist is quite lenient in his criticism when he says that the German text diverges very often from what he calls the original (that is to say, doubtless, from the original printed by the Dutch). The printed German text does not deserve to be called a translation from the printed Dutch text: it constitutes, strictly speaking, another book in itself. But let us pass over this point. We shall return to it.

Anneliese Schütz, a great friend of the Franks, like them a Jewish German refugee in the Netherlands, and Anne’s teacher, thus prepared a text, in German, of the diary of her former pupil. She set to work on that job… for Anne’s grandmother! This woman, very old, did not in fact read Dutch. She therefore needed a translation into German, the Franks’ mother tongue. Anneliese Schütz composed her “translation” “in the grandmother’s perspective” (aus der Grossmutter-Perspektive, page 55). She took astonishing liberties. Where, according to her recollections, Anne had expressed herself better, she had Anne… express herself better! The grandmother was entitled to that! ([…] “die Grossmutter habe ein Recht darauf, mehr zu erfahren – vor allem dort, wo Anne nach meiner Erinnerung etwas besseres gesagt hatte” (ibidem). Let it be said in passing that Anneliese Schütz is never mentioned by Anne Frank in the Diary. Are we to understand that she lived near Anne or that she met her during the twenty-five months when Anne was hiding at Prinsengracht? In addition to the “perspective of the grandmother,” which dictated certain “obligations”, there was what one can call the “commercial perspective” which dictated other obligations. In effect, when the time came to publish the Diary in Germany, Anneliese Schütz inserted new changes. Let us take an example that she herself mentions. The manuscript, it is said, included the following sentence: “no greater hostility in the world than between the Germans and the Jews” (ibidem). Anneliese Schütz replaced “the Germans” with “those Germans”, taking care to put “those” in italics, so as to give German readers to understand that there, Anne meant the Nazis. She stated to the Der Spiegel journalist: “I always told myself that a book meant to be sold in Germany cannot contain expressions offensive for the Germans” (ibidem). For my part, I would say that that argument – at the same time of a commercial, sentimental and political order – is perhaps understandable when coming from a woman of Berlin Jewish origin, who had been active before the First World War in a suffragette movement and who had had to leave her country for political reasons, but otherwise that argument is all the less acceptable as the “offensive” words have been and continue to be propagated in millions of copies of the Diary sold throughout the world in languages other than German. And I am not speaking here from the simple standpoint of respect for the truth.

55) One does not have the impression that Mr Frank’s “collaborators” in the publishing of the Diary were very pleased with their work, nor that they were especially delighted about the fuss made of that Diary. Let us take those collaborators one by one: about Isa Cauvern, we can say nothing except that she committed suicide by throwing herself from her window in June 1946. Mr Frank had just signed or was about to sign his contract for publication with Contact. The reason for that suicide is unknown and it is at present impossible to establish any kind of link between it and the affair of the Diary. As regards the author of the preface, Anna Romein-Verschoor, she was to declare to Der Spiegel in 1959: “I was not at all wary enough” (Ich bin wohl nicht misstrauisch genug gewesen). Her husband had been no more wary. Albert Cauvern was never able to get Mr Frank to return to him the typewritten text on which he had worked. He had requested that text “in memory of my wife”, who died in 1946, and Mr Frank had not sent it back. Kurt Baschwitz, a friend of Mr Frank’s, was one of the “three eminent persons” (the two others being Mr and Mrs Romein). In 1959 he was to plead for an “agreement” between Mr Frank and Lothar Stielau. He recommended, on the other hand, a full publication of the text of the manuscripts to solve the problem. In order to know what the text actually was, that solution would have been, in effect, the most practical. Anneliese Schütz, for her part, was to show her strong disapproval both of the “Anne Frank myth” and of Mr Frank’s attitude towards Lothar Stielau. She was for a policy of silence: the least fuss possible about Anne Frank and her Diary. She went so far as to disapprove of Mr Frank and Ernst Schnabel for Spur…: what need was there for that book? As regards Stielau, if he had made the remark for which Mr Frank reproached him, he need only act as though no-one had heard him. The “sharp” (scharff [ibidem]) reaction by Anneliese Schütz was all the more curious as that woman presented herself as the “translator” of the Diary into German and as Ernst Schnabel had – but did she know it? – pushed complacency so far as to say, with regard to that implausible “translation”: Ich wünschte, alle Übersetzungen waren so getreu (page 54) (“I wish all translations were so faithful”).

Chapter V

56) Back to Amsterdam for a new investigation: the interviews with witnesses prove unfavourable for Mr Frank. The likely truth.

57) The internal criticism of the Diary had led me to think that it was a “cock and bull story”, a novel, a lie. The subsequent investigations had only served to reinforce that judgment. But, if I indeed saw where the lie was, I did not see as well where the truth was. I saw indeed that the Frank family could not have lived for twenty-five months at 263 Prinsengracht in the way they claimed. But how had they lived in reality? Where? With whom? And finally, was it indeed at 263 Prinsengracht that they had been arrested?

58) Without any illusions about the answer that he would give me, I posed those questions to Kraler (by his real name, Kugler) in a letter that I sent to him in Canada. I asked him likewise if Anne appeared to him to have been the author of the Diary and how he could explain to me why Vossen (by his real name, Voskuyl) had believed that the Franks were somewhere other than at 263 Prinsengracht, and even in Switzerland, to be precise. His response was discourteous. He sent my letter and his response to Mr Frank. It is that letter which Mr Frank called “idiotic” during a telephone conversation. It is, I suppose, that response which, one year later, earned Kraler a prize of $10,000 from an institution for having “protected Anne Frank and her family during the war, in Amsterdam” (see the Hamburger Abendblatt, 6 June 1978, page 13). Disregarding its discourtesy, the response from Kraler was not lacking in interest for me. Kraler responded to me that Vossen’s suggestion concerning the presence of the Franks in Switzerland “was made to protect the family who were in hiding” (letter of 14 April 1977). He added, in regard to Anne, “there have been other greatly gifted young people, even younger than Anne.” I found that the first point of this answer was precise but incomprehensible if one recalls that Vossen had, according to his own daughter, the personal feeling that the Franks were in Switzerland. As to the second point of the answer, its stereotyped character was striking coming from a man whose only difficulty ought to have been in choosing among several precise and convincing answers. Kraler, as a matter of fact, was supposed to have lived for 25 months in almost daily contact with that Anne Frank whose “diary” was an open secret, it seems, for those who knew her.

59) Listening to Elli on 30 November 1977, then to Miep and Henk on 2 December 1977, I was struck right away with the impression that these three persons had not at all lived for 25 months in contact with the Franks and with the other persons in hiding in the manner in which this is presented to us in the Diary. On the other hand, I became convinced that Miep and Elli had at least been present at 263 Prinsengracht on 4 August 1944, at the time of the police raid. It is difficult for me to account otherwise for the insistence with which Elli and Miep avoided my questions on the 25 months, while coming back over and over again to the day of 4 August 1944. Elli, of whom I had much difficulty in finding any trace, expected neither my visit, nor the type of detailed questions I was going to put to her. Miep and Henk were expecting my visit and knew that I had seen Mr Frank. My questions were brief, limited in number, and, with certain exceptions, I did not point out to my witnesses either their mutual contradictions or their contradictions with the Diary. Elli, full of good will, seemed to me to have a good memory of the war years and of the minor events of her daily life in those days (she was 23 years old in 1944). But, in regard to those twenty-five months, her answers to my questions were for the most part: “I do not know I do not recall I cannot explain to you “ “The coal storage place? It was in the Van Daans’ room.” “The ashes? I suppose that the men took them down.” “The night watchman Slagter? I have never heard him spoken of; after the war, we had a secretary who had that name.” “Lewin? I never had anything to do with him.” “The ‘swinging bookcase’? You’re right, it was useless, but it was a camouflage for strangers.” I asked Elli to describe first the front house, then the annex. For the front house, she was able to give some details; it is true that she worked there. For the annex, her answer was interesting. She declared to me that she had, all in all, spent only one night there, and that before the arrival of the eight clandestines! She added that she did not remember the premises, because she had been very nervous. But, in the Diary, Elli is supposed to have come to take almost all of her mid-day meals with the people in hiding (see 5 August 1943: Elli arrives regularly at 12:45 pm; 20 August 1943: she arrives regularly at 5:30 pm as a messenger of freedom; 2 March 1944: she does the dishes with the two families’ mothers). In conclusion, I asked Elli to recall for me any detail of family life, any anecdote which does not appear in the book. She showed herself to be totally incapable of doing that.

60) Miep and Henk were likewise incapable of furnishing me with the least detail on the life of the people in hiding. The most important sentence of their testimony was the following: “We did not know exactly how they lived.” And in addition: “We were only in the annex for one weekend; we slept in the future room of Anne and Dussel”. “How did the persons in hiding keep them selves warm? Perhaps with gas.” “The coal storage place was downstairs in the store.” “There was no vacuum cleaner.” “The greengrocer did not bring anything to Prinsengracht.” “The ‘swinging bookcase’ had been constructed well before the arrival of the Franks” (!) “I myself, Miep, I brought the vegetables, while Elli brought the milk.” “I myself, Henk, worked elsewhere than in the business, but every day I came to have lunch in the office of the girls and I came to speak to them for 15 or 20 minutes.” (This point, among others, is in total contradiction with the Diary, where it is said that Henk, Miep and Elli took their lunch in the annex, with the people in hiding. See 5 August 1943.) During our entire interview, Miep gave me the impression of being almost in agony. Her gaze avoided me. When I finally let her speak to me about 4 August 1944, her attitude suddenly changed completely. It was with obvious pleasure that she began to call to mind, with a great abundance of details, the arrival of the police and its results. I noted, however, a striking disproportion in the details of the account. Those details were numerous, vivid, and obviously truthful when Miep was calling to mind what had personally happened to her with the Austrian arresting officer, Silberbauer, either on that day or the following days. But, when it was a question of the Franks and of their companions in misfortune, the details became scanty and unclear. Thus it was that Miep had seen nothing of the arrest of the persons in hiding. She had not seen them leave. She had not seen them climb into the police vehicle, because that vehicle, which she had seen through the window of her office, “was too near the wall of the house.” From a distance from the other side of the canal, Henk had seen the police vehicle, but without being able to recognise the people who were entering or leaving. In regard to the manuscripts, Miep repeated to me the account that she had given to Schnabel. She told me also that Mr Frank, after returning to the Netherlands at the end of May of 1945, lived for seven years under their roof. It was only toward the end of June or the beginning of July of 1945 that she had returned the manuscripts to him.

61) In the wake of those two interviews my judgment became the following: These three persons must have, on the whole, told me the truth about their own lives. It is probably true that they had not been familiar with, so to speak, the annex. It is certainly true that, in the front house, life unfolded approximately as they had recounted it to me (mid-day meal taken together in the office of the secretaries; the men of the store eating in the store; small food errands made in the neighbourhood, etc.). It is certainly true that a police raid took place on 4 August 1944 and that Miep had had business on that day and on the following days with a Karl Silberbauer. It is probable, on the other hand, that those three persons maintained some relations with the Frank family. In that case, why did they so obviously feel reticent to speak about it? Let us suppose, as a matter of fact, that the Franks and some other persons in hiding had really lived for 25 months in proximity to those three persons. In that case, why such a silence?

62) The answer to these questions could be the following: the Franks and, perhaps, some other Jews did actually live in the annex of 263 Prinsengracht. But they lived there quite differently than the Diary relates. For example, they lived a life there that was no doubt cautious, but not like in a prison. They were able to live there as did so many other Jews who hid themselves either in the city, or in the countryside. They “hid themselves without hiding.” Their adventure was sadly commonplace. It did not have that fantastic, absurd, and obviously deceitful character that Mr Frank had wanted to pass off as being realistic, authentic, and true to life. After the war, just as the friends of Mr Frank were prepared to testify on his behalf, so were they hesitant to guarantee the narrative of the Diary. Just as much as they were able to offer themselves as guarantors of the real sufferings of Mr Frank and of his family, so did it seem difficult for them to bear witness, in addition, to imaginary sufferings. Kraler, Koophuis, Miep, Elli, and Henk showed their friendship to Mr Frank; they publicly showed their sympathy for him as for a man full of charm and, at the same time, overwhelmed with misfortunes. Perhaps they felt flattered to be presented in the press as his companions in his days of misfortune. Perhaps certain among them accepted the idea that, when a man has suffered, he has the moral right to exaggerate somewhat the story of his sufferings. In the eyes of certain of them, the main point could have been that Mr Frank and his family had had to suffer cruelly at the hands of the Germans; in that case the “details” of those sufferings mattered little. But kindness has its limits. Mr Frank found only one person to guarantee his account of the existence of the Diary. That person was his former secretary and friend: Miep Van Santen (by her real name, Miep Gies). Still the testimony of Miep is strangely hesitant. Her testimony comes back to saying that after the arrest of the Franks, she had gathered up from the floor of a room of the annex a diary, an account book, some notebooks and a certain number of loose leaf sheets. For her it was a matter of objects belonging to Anne Frank. Miep only gave that testimony in an official form thirty years after the events, on 5 June 1974, in the office of Mr Antoun Jacob Dragt, a notary in Amsterdam. Miep added that she had made the discovery with Elli. But, on the same day, in the presence of the same notary, the latter declared that she remembered having been there when those things had been discovered but she did no more remember exactly how they had been discovered. The restraint is important and it must not have pleased Mr Frank.

63) Schnabel wrote (see above) that all the “witnesses” he had questioned — including, consequently, Miep, Elli, Henk, and Koophuis — had behaved as if they had to protect themselves against the legend of Anne Frank. He added that if they all had read the Diary, they nevertheless did not mention it. That last sentence means obviously that, in each interview with a witness, it was Schnabel himself who had to take the initiative in speaking of the Diary. We know that his book had not been published in the Netherlands, except in a shortened and censored form: it is in the Netherlands that the principal “witnesses” are located. For its part, the article from Der Spiegel (see above) proves that others of Mr Frank’s “Witnesses” have ended up having the same negative reactions. The foundations of the myth of Anne Frank – a myth that rests on the truth and authenticity of the Diary – have not been strengthened with time: they have crumbled.

Chapter VI

64) The persons who, respectively, reported and arrested the Franks: why has Mr Frank wanted to assure them anonymity?

65) Since 1944 Mr Frank and his friends knew that their alleged “betrayer” was called Van Maaren and the person who arrested them was called Silberbauer. Van Maaren was one of the employees in their shop. Silberbauer was a non-commissioned officer of the Security Service (SD) in Amsterdam. In the Diary, as well as in the previously mentioned book by Schnabel, Van Maaren is called V.M. As regards Silberbauer, he is called Silberthaler in Schnabel’s book. It seems that, at the time of the Liberation, Van Maaren had some trouble with the law in his country. His guilt could not be proved, Mr Frank told me. “V. M. had had enough troubles like that and he should be left alone.” Schnabel had not wanted to obtain the testimony of V. M. nor had he wanted to obtain that of the arresting officer.

66) In 1963 the world press suddenly echoed with a startling news story: Simon Wiesenthal had just rediscovered the person who arrested the Franks. He was Karl Silberbauer, a police official in Vienna. Wiesenthal had not informed Mr Frank about his research. The latter, questioned by journalists, declared that he had known for nearly twenty years the name of the person who arrested him. He added that that entire affair was unfortunate and that Silberbauer had only done his duty in arresting him. Miep, for her part, declared that, if she had used the pseudonym of Silberthaler to designate the arresting officer, that was only at the request of Mr Frank; the latter had pointed out that there could, as a matter of fact, be some other persons bearing the name of Silberbauer to whom, consequently, some harm could be done: (De Heer Frank) had mij verzocht de naam Silberthaler te noemen, omdat er misschien nog meer mensen Silberbauer heetten en die zouden wij dan in diskrediet brengen (Volkskrant, 21 November 1963).

67) There was a kind of struggle between Simon Wiesenthal and Mr Frank. It was the latter who in a way got the best of it. As a matter of fact, Karl Silberbauer was, at the end of eleven months, reinstated in the Viennese police. A disciplinary commission, sitting behind closed doors (as is the custom), released him. The judgment in the appeal commission (Oberdisziplinarkommission) was likewise favourable to Silberbauer, as were also conclusions of a commission of inquiry of the Ministry of the Interior. Silberbauer had indeed arrested the Franks at 263 Prinsengracht, but his participation in “War crimes against the Jews or members of the Resistance” could not be proved. In June of 1978, I obtained an interview with Simon Wiesenthal in his office in Vienna. In regard to that affair, he declared to me that Mr Frank was “crazy.” In his opinion, Mr Frank, in his concern to maintain a cult (that of his daughter), meant to spare the former Nazis, while he, Simon Wiesenthal, had only one concern: that of seeing justice done. Simon Wiesenthal did not know the real name of the store employee V. M. There again Mr Frank had done what was necessary: the Royal Institute of Documentation (for the Second World War), directed by his friend Louis De Jong, responded, if we are to believe an Amsterdam newspaper (Trouw, 22 November 1963), that that name would not be given to Mr Wiesenthal, even if he asked for it: deze naam zou men zelfs aan Mr Wiesenthal niet doorgeven, wanneer deze daarom zou verzoeken.

68) The authorities in Vienna were not able to authorize me to consult the records of the commissions of inquiry. As to Karl Silberbauer, he died in 1972. My inquiry was therefore limited to the analysis of some Dutch, German, and French newspapers from 1963 and 1964 and to the interviewing of a witness whom I believe to be well informed, honest, and possessed of a good memory. That witness begged us, my companion and myself, not to reveal his name. I have promised to say nothing about his name. I will keep my promise only half-way. The importance of his testimony is such that it seemed impossible to me to pass over it in silence. The name of that witness and his address as well as the name of my companion and his address are put down in a sealed envelope [Annex 2].

69) Here is, to begin with, what I would call: “The testimony of Karl Silberbauer, collected by a Dutch journalist of the Hague Post and translated into German by a Jewish German journalist of the Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden in Deutschland (6 December 1963, page 10).” Silberbauer recounts that at the time (4 August 1944) he had received a telephone call from an unknown person who had revealed to him that some Jews remained hidden in an office on Prinsengracht: “I then alerted eight Dutchmen of the Security Service (SD) and went with them to Prinsengracht. I saw that one of my Dutch companions tried to speak to an employee but the latter made a gesture with his thumb toward the upstairs.” Silberbauer described how he entered the place where the Jews kept themselves hidden: “The people ran in all directions and packed their suitcases. One man then came toward me and presented himself as being Otto Frank. He had been, he said, a reserve officer in the German Army. To my question about the length of time that they had been in hiding, Frank had answered: ‘Twenty-five months.’ Seeing that I did not want to believe him, Silberbauer continued, he took the hand of a young girl who stood at his side. That must have been Anne. He placed the child against the side post of a door, which bore some marks in various places. I spoke again to Frank: ‘What a pretty girl you have there!’” Silberbauer said then that he had only very much later made the connection between that arrest and what the newspapers said about the Frank family. After the war, his reading of the Diary surprised him very much. He especially did not understand how Anne could have known that the Jews were gassed: “We were all unaware,” Silberbauer explained, “of what awaited the Jews. I especially do not understand how Anne in her diary could assert that the Jews were gassed.” In the opinion of Silberbauer, nothing would have happened to the Franks if they had not kept themselves hidden.

70) That exclusive interview with Silberbauer constitutes a very faithful summary, I think, of the remarks attributed by the journalists to the person who arrested the Frank family. The testimony that I announced above (page 99) confirms in general the content of the interview, with the exception that the episode of the raised thumb would be a sheer fabrication. Silberbauer supposedly noted nothing of the kind, for the good reason that he is supposed to have made his way immediately toward the annex. He did nothing but take the corridor and the stairway, without any detour toward the offices or the stores. And it is there that the testimony in question furnishes us with an important element. One will have noticed that, in his interview, the policeman does not state precisely how he had access to the place where those in hiding kept themselves. He does not mention the existence of a “swinging bookcase” (ein drehbares Regal). But my witness is quite positive: Silberbauer had never encountered anything of the kind, but a heavy wooden door like one finds at the entrance, for example, of a storehouse. The exact word was ein Holzverschlag. The policeman had simply knocked at the door and it had been opened to him. A third point of this testimony is, if possible, still more important. Karl Silberbauer said and repeated that he did not believe in the authenticity of the famous Diary, because, according to him, there had never been on the site anything that would resemble the manuscripts that Miep claimed to have found scattered about the floor one week after 4 August 1944. The policeman had the professional habit of carrying out arrests and searches since before the war. Such a pile of documents would not have escaped his notice. (Let us add here that eight men accompanied him and that the entire operation had been conducted slowly and correctly and then the policeman, after having entrusted the key to the premises to V. M. or to another employee, had returned to the premises on three occasions.) Silberbauer, the witness asserts, had the habit of saying that Miep had not, in reality, played a great role in that whole story (whence comes the fact that they had not even arrested her). Afterwards, Miep had tried to give herself some importance, notably with that episode of the miraculous discovery of the manuscripts.

71) The same witness declared to me, in the presence of my companion, that Silberbauer in 1963-1964 had drawn up an account, for the courts, of the arrest of the Franks and that those details might appear, in that account. A second witness certainly could have given me very valuable testimony on the statements of Silberbauer, but that second witness preferred to say nothing.

Chapter VII

72) A comparison between the Dutch and German texts: wanting to do too much, Mr Frank gave himself away; he signed a literary fraud.

73) I have before me two texts. The first is in Dutch (D), the second is in German (G). The publishers tell me that D is the original text, while G is the translation of that original text. I have, a priori, no reason to dispute their word. But scientific rigour, as well as common sense and experience, teach that it is necessary to receive the statements of publishers with caution. It happens, as a matter of fact, that there can be error or deceit on their part. A book is a piece of merchandise like any other. The label can be deceiving about the content. As a consequence, I will set aside here the labels that are proposed to me or that are imposed upon me. I will speak neither about the “original version in Dutch,” nor about the “translation into German.” I will temporarily suspend all judgment. I will grant a precise name to those two books only with reservations. For the moment, I will give them a name which is, at the same time, equal and neutral. I will therefore speak of “texts.”

74) I am going to describe the text D and the text G that I have before me. I am going to begin with text D, but I could, just as well, begin with text G. I insist on this latter point. The order of succession that I have chosen here ought not to imply any succession in time, nor any relationship of filiation of the father/son kind between D and G.

75) My text D presents itself thus: Anne Frank – Het Achterhuis – Dagboekbrieven 14 juni 1942 – 1 augustus 1944, 1977. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Contact; Eerste druk 1947 / Vijfenvijftigste druk 1977. The author’s text begins on page 22 with the photographic reproduction of a sort of dedication signed: “Anne Frank, 12 Juni 1942.” On page 23 appears the first of the 169 entries which make up this “diary” to which they have given the title The Annex. The book has 273 pages. The last page of the text is page 269. I estimate the length of the text itself at about 72,500 Dutch words. I have not compared the text of that 55th edition with the text of the first edition. At the time of my investigation in Amsterdam I received assurances from Messrs Fred Batten and Christian Blom that no change had been made in the successive editions. Those two persons were employed by the Contact publishing house and they were involved, along with Mr P. De Neve (deceased), in the original acceptance of the typed manuscript that Mr Frank had deposited with an interpreter by the name of Mr Kahn. It is this Mr Kahn who was, in 1957, to serve as the companion and interpreter for Ernst Schnabel when the latter came to see Elli in Amsterdam.

76) My text G presents itself thus: Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank / 12. Juni 1942 – 1. August 1944, 1977. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag / No. 77 / Ungekürzte Ausgabe/43. Auflage 1293000-1332000 / Aus dem Holländischen ubertragen von Anneliese Schütz / Holländische Original-Ausgabe, Het Achterhuis. Amsterdam: Contact. After the dedication page, the first of the entries appears on page 9. There are 175 entries. The last entry ends on page 201. I estimate the length of the text at about 77,000 German words. The book has 203 pages. This paperback was first published in March 1955. Fischer obtained the Lizenzausgabe (distribution license) from the Lambert-Schneider publishing house, in Heidelberg.

77) I call attention to a first disturbing fact. Text D has 169 entries while text G, which is presented as the translation of text D, has 175 entries.

78) I call attention to a second disturbing fact. I set out in search of the extra entries of text G. It is not six entries that I discover (175 minus 169 equals 6), but seven entries. The explanation is the following: text G does not have the entry of 6 December 1943 from text D.

79) I point out a third disturbing fact. Because the Dutch language and the German language are very close to each other, the translated text ought not to be appreciably longer than the text that is being translated. But, even if I disregard the number of words that make up the seven entries in question, I am very far from reaching a difference of approximately 4,500 (G 77,000 minus D 72,500 equals 4,500). Therefore, text G even when it has some entries in common with text D, has them under another form. Here are the figures:

 

[Error on my part (R. Faurisson): The letter of 12 May 1944 (380 words) is not missing in text D. It exists in D but dated: 11 May. What is missing in D is the letter of 11 May but which, in texte G, has … 520 words!]

 

In reality, as will be seen later on, this figure represents only a small part of the surplus of words that text G contains. But, meanwhile, in order not to seem too attached to the calculations, I am going to give some precise examples involving approximately 550 words.

80) Among the entries that texts D and G apparently have in common, here are some entries (among many others) where text G has some extra fragments, that is to say some fragments with which the Dutch reader was never acquainted:

                                                                       ______

Total of these simple examples                            550 words

81) Among the letters that texts D and G apparently have in common, here are some (amongst many others) where text G is missing some fragments, i.e. fragments of which the German reader has never been aware:

17. Nov. 1942           «Speciale… overgelegd»      15 words
18. Juni 1943           «Daar Pim… heeft»              30
19. Juli 1943            «Ijdelheid… persoontje»       20

                                                                     __________

Total of these simple examples                              65 words

 

One remarkable fact is that the missing fragments are both very numerous and very short. For example, the letter of 20 August 1943 is cut by 19 words in text G, those 19 words being distributed as follows: 3 + 1 + 4 + 4 + 7 = 19

82) I call attention to a fourth disturbing fact. This fact is independent of the quantities that are extra or lacking. This fact is that some fragments of entries move somehow. For example, the entire next-to-the-last paragraph of text D of Donderdag, 27 April 1944 is found in the last paragraph of text G of Dienstag, 25 April 1944. On the 7th of January 1944, the last paragraph of text D becomes, in text G, the sixth paragraph before the end. On 27 April 1944, the next-to-the-last paragraph of text D becomes, in text G, the last paragraph of the entry of 25 April 1944.

83) I call attention to a fifth disturbing fact. It is not a question, this time, of additions, of subtractions, of transferrals, but of alterations that are the sign of inconsistencies. I mean to say this: suppose that I leave aside all the features by which texts D and G differ so obviously from one another, and suppose that I turn now toward what I would call “the remainder” (a “remainder” which, according to the publishers, ought to make up “the common stock,” “the identical part”), I am surprised to find out that, from one end to the other of these two books, except with the rarest exceptions, this “remainder” is very far from being identical. As is going to be seen by the examples that follow, these inconsistencies cannot be attributed to a clumsy or whimsical translation. The same entry of 10 March 1943 gives, for text D, Bij kaarslicht (by candlelight) and, for text G, Bei Tage (By daylight); een nacht (one night) for Eines Tages (one day); Verdwenen de dieven (the robbers disappeared) for schwieg der Larm (the noise became quiet). On 13 January 1943, Anne said that she rejoiced at the prospect of buying after the war nieuwe kleren en schoenen (some new clothes and shoes); that is in text D, because in text G she speaks of neue Kleider und Bücher (of new clothes and books). On 18 May 1943, Mrs Van Daan is als door Mouschi gebeten (as if bitten by Mouschi [the cat]); that is in text D, because in text G she is wie von einer Tarantel gestochen (as if stung by a tarantula). Depending on whether one consults D or G, a man is a “fascist” or a Riese (giant) (20 October 1942). Some “red beans and some white beans” (bruine en witte bonen) become “white beans” (weisse Bohnen) (12 March 1943). Some sandals for 6.5 florins become some sandals without indication of price (ibidem), while “five hostages” (een stuk of 5 gijzelaars) has become “a certain number of these hostages” (eine Anzahl dieser Geiseln), and that in the same entry of 9 October 1942 where “the Germans” (Duitsers) are no more than “these Germans” (diese Deutschen) who are very specifically the Nazis (see above). On 17 November 1942 Dussel meets the Franks and the Van Daans in their hiding-place. Text D says that “Miep helped him take off his overcoat” (Miep liet hem zijn jas uitdoen); learning that the Franks are there, “he nearly fainted from surprise” and, says Anne, he remained “silent” “as if he wanted first a little time, a moment, to read the truth on our faces” (viel hij haast fiauw van verbazing sprakeloos alsof hij eerst even goed de waarheid van onze gezichten wilde lezen); but text G says of Dussel that he “had to take off his overcoat” and describes his astonishment in this way: “he could not understand he was not able to believe his eyes” (Er musste den Mantel ausziehen kannte er es nicht fassen und wollte seinen Augen nicht trauen). A person who suffered from an eye problem and who “bathed it with camomile tea” (bette het met kamillen-the) becomes a person who “made himself some compresses” (machte Umschläge) (10 December 1942). Where “Papa” alone is waiting (Pim verwacht) it is “we” all who are waiting (Wir erwarten) (27 February 1943). Where the two cats receive their names of Moffi and Tommi, according to whether they appear boche (German) or angliche (English), “just as in politics” (Net als in de politek), text G says that they were named “according to their spiritual dispositions” (Ihren Anlagen gemäss) (12 March 1943). On 26 March 1943, some people who “were quite awake” (waren veel wakken) “were in an endless fear” (schreckten immer wieder auf), “a piece of flannel” (een lap flanel) becomes a “mattress cover” (Matratzenschoner) (1 May 1943). “To go on strike” (staken) “in many areas” (in viele gebieden) becomes: “sabotage is committed on all sides” (an allen Ecken und Enden sabotiert wird) (ibidem). A “folding bed” (harmonicabed) is encountered as a “loungechair” (Liegestuhl) (21 August 1942). The following sentence: “The gunfire no longer did anything to us, our fear had gone away” (Het kanonvuur deerde ons niet meer, onze angst was weggevaad) becomes: “and the situation, for today, was saved” (und die Situation war für heute gerettet) (18 May 1943).

84) I had noted these few examples in inconsistencies in the course of a simple sample that did not go beyond the 54^th letter of text D (18 May 1943). I decided then to initiate a much more rigorous sample, bearing on the eleven entries going from 19 July to 29 September 1943 (entries 60 to 73). To the inconsistencies, I decided to add the additions and the subtractions. The result was such that the simple enumeration of the differences noted would require several typewritten pages. I am not able to do that here. I will content myself with only a few examples here, avoiding the most striking ones because, unfortunately, the most striking are also the longest ones to cite.

• Letter of 19 July 1943 “parents killed” (dode ouders) becomes “parents” (Eltern);
• letter of 23 July 1943: G has, in addition, at least 49 words plus 3 words;
• letter of 26 July 1943: G has, in addition, four plus four words and is lacking two words: over Italie;
• letter of 29 July 1943: G has twenty words missing and “twenty years” (twintig jaar) becomes “twenty-five years” (25 Jahren);
• letter of 3 August 1943: this letter of 210 words in text G is completely missing in text D;
• letter of 4 August 1943: D gives “couch” and G “loungechair.” In D a flea “floats” (drijft) in the wash water, “only in warm months or weeks” (allen in de hete maanden of weeken), while for G that flea must “lose his life” (sein Leben lassen) there, without any other detail concerning weather. D gives: “to use some cotton [soaked] in hydrogen peroxide (that serves to bleach her black moustache fuzz)” (waterstofwatjes hanteren [dient om zwarte snorharen te bleken]), while G gives simply: “and other little toiletry secrets“) (und andere kleine Toilettengehemniss). The comparison of “like a brook falling from a mountain” (als een beekje van een berg) becomes “like a brook on the boulders” (wie ein Bächlein über die Kiesel). Some “irregular French verbs”: this is what Anne thinks of in text D (aan Franse onregalmatige wekworden), but, in text G, this can only be about irregular Dutch verbs, it seems, because she says that she “dreams” (träume ich) of “irregular verbs” (von unregelmässigen Verben). Text G contents itself with: “Rrrrrrring, upstairs [sounds the Van Daans’] alarm” (Krrrrrrrr, oben der Wecker), while D gives: “Rrrring the little alarm [sounds], which at each hour of the day (when it is wanted or sometimes also without being wanted can raise its little voice.” (Trrr het wekkertje, dat op elk uur van de dag [als men er naar vraagt of soms ook sonder dat] zijn stemmetje kan verheffen);
• letter of 5 August 1943: all of it is a description of the usual meal, from 1:15 pm to 1:45 pm, and of the things that follow, and there are important differences; besides, what is announced, by D, as “The great share-out” is announced by G as “small lunch” (De grote uitdeling/Kleiner Lunch). I underline the adjectives; the possible, but not certain, irony of D has disappeared in G. Of the three “couches” in D, there only remains one “couch” in G;
• letter of 7 August 1943: this letter constitutes quite an interesting puzzle. A very long letter, it begins, in text G, with nine lines introducing a story of 74 lines entitled Kaatje as well as another story of 99 lines entitled Katrientje. This entry is completely absent from D. The Dutch, for their part, know of these stories only by way of a separate book entitled Stories, in which there appear, besides, some other “unedited stories” of Anne Frank;
• letter of 9 August 1943: among many other curious things there are “some horn-rimmed glasses” (een hoornen bril) which become “some dark horn-rimmed glasses” (eine dunkle Hornbrille) in text G;
• letter of 10 August 1943: the “war material” of D becomes the “guns” (Kanonen) of G. The sentence concerning the bell in the Westertoren is entirely different. And, especially, G has an episode of 140 words that does not appear in D. Anne, who has received some new shoes, tells there about a series of misadventures that had happened to her on that same day: she had pricked her right thumb with a large needle; she had bumped her head against the door of the cupboard; because of the noise caused, she received a “scolding” (Ruffel); she was unable to soothe her forehead because the water must not be turned on; she had a large bruise over her right eye; she had stubbed her toe on the vacuum cleaner; her foot became infected, it is all swollen. Result: Anne cannot put on her pretty new shoes. (You will have noticed here the presence of a vacuum cleaner in a place where silence would have had to be necessary constantly);
• letter of 18 August 1943: among nine differences, we see some “beans” (bonen) turn into “green peas” (Erbsen);
• letter of 20 August 1943: I will mention only one example of a difference; it concerns the bread; the narrative is appreciably different, and for text D, this bread is located in two successive places: at first the steel cupboard of the office looking out on the street (in the front house), then, the kitchen cupboard of the annex (stalen kast, Voorkantoor/Keukenkast), while G only mentions the first location, without being precise about the second; the unfortunate thing is that the first location mentioned by D is a simple cupboard located in the office looking out on the courtyard: the office of Kraler, and not that of Koophuis (“the bread, which is put in Kraler’s room for us every day”)! (About the respective offices of Kraler and of Koophuis, see the entry of 9 July 1942.) There is here a serious material contradiction between the two texts, with changes of words, of sentences, etc.;
• letter of 23 August 1943: among other curious things, “to read or to study” (lesen of leren) becomes “to read or to write” (lesen oder schreiben), “Dickens and the dictionary” (Dickens en het woordenbook) becomes only “Dickens”, some “bolsters” (peluwen) turn into “eiderdown pillows” (Plumeaus) (in Dutch, “eider-down pillows” would be said as eiderdons or dekbed);
• letter of 10 September 1943: among five differences, I notice that the broadcast, so eagerly awaited each day, from Radio Oranje (the Voice of Holland from overseas) begins at 8:15 pm for D and at 8:00 pm for G;
• letter of 16 September 1943: “ten valerianes” (tien valeriaantjes) become “ten of the small white pills” (zehn von den kleinen weissen Pillen). “A long face and a drooping mouth” (een uitgestreken gezicht en neerhangende mond) became “a tight-lipped mouth with worry lines” (einen zusammengekniffennen Mund und Sorgenfalten). The winter compared to a fearful obstacle, a “biting winter” which is there like a “heavy block of stone” (het grote rotsblok, dat winter heet), is no more than a simple winter (dem Winter). An “overcoat” (jas) becomes “hat and cane” (Hut und Stock). A sentence of 24 words, claiming to describe a picturesque scene, finds itself reduced to five German words. On the other hand, six Dutch words become 13 German words with a very different meaning;
• letter of 29 September 1943: “a grumbling father” (een mopperenden vader) becomes “the father who is not in agreement with her choice” (den Vater, der nicht mit ihrer Wahl einverstanden ist). “Energetically” (energiek) becomes ganz kalt und ruhig (in a quite cold and quiet manner), etc.

85) I think it pointless to go on with such enumeration. It is not exaggerated to say that the first entry of the collection gives us the tone of the whole. In that short letter, the Dutch learn that, for her birthday, Anne received “a little plant” (een plantje). The Germans have the privilege of learning that that plant was “a cactus” (eine Kaktee). In return, the Dutch knew that Anne received “two peony branches,” while the Germans must content themselves with knowing that there were “some peony branches” (einige Zweige Pfingstrosen). The Dutch have the right to the following sentence: “such were, that morning, the children of Flora who sat on my table” (dat waren die ochtend de kinderen van Flora, die op mijn tafel stonden). In the German text, the table has disappeared, as well as “the childen of Flora” (a curious, hackneyed phrase from the pen of a child of thirteen; one would have expected it rather from an adult seeking laboriously and artlessly to “decorate” his style). The Germans are entitled only to: “These were the first flowers offered by way of greetings” (Das waren die ersten Blumengrüsse). The Dutch learn that Anne, on that day, will make a present to her teachers and classmates of “some butter cakes” (boterkoekjes). The Germans are entitled to “sweets” (Bonbons). The “chocolate”, which is there for the Dutch, will disappear for the Germans. More surprising: a book that Anne will be able to buy for herself with the money that has just been given to her on that Sunday 14 June 1942, becomes, in the German text, a book that she has already bought for herself (zodat ik me kan kopen/habe ich mir gekauft).

86) On the other hand, the last entry of the collection is identical in the two texts. That confirms for us, if there were need for it, that the German translator – if one must speak about “translation” – was quite capable of respecting the Dutch text. But it is too evident now that one cannot speak of translation, nor even of “adaptation.” Is it to translate, is it to “adapt” to put day for night (10 March 1943)? Books for shoes (13 January 1943)? Candy for butter cakes (14 June 1942}? Giant for fascist (20 October 1942)? Is “candles” translated by “day” and “cats” by “tarantula”? “To float” by “to die”? “Large” by “small” (4 August 1943)? Only magicians can change an overcoat into a hat and a cane. With Mrs Anneliese Schütz and Mr Frank, the table disappears (14 June 1942) and the stairway steals away (the Dutch entry of 16 September 1943 mentions a very peculiar stairway, which would have led directly to the persons in hiding: die direct naar boven leidt). The bread storage place changes its location. What is behind is encountered again in front (Kraler’s office). Numbers appear and disappear. Hours change. Faces change. Events multiply or disappear. Beings as well as things are subject to eclipses and to sudden changes. Anne, one could say, emerges from her tomb in order to come to lengthen one of her narratives or to shorten it; sometimes she writes another or even reduces it to nothingness.

87) Ten years after her death, Anne’s text continues to change. In 1955, the Fischer publishing house publishes her Diary. as a pocket-book under a “discreetly” reworked form. The reader could especially compare the following entries:

• 9 July 1942: Hineingekommen gemalt war (25 words) replaced by: Neben gemalt war (41 words). The appearance of a door!
• 11 July 1942: bange replaced by besorgt;
• 21 September 1942: gerügt replaced by gescholten and drei Westen changing itself into drei Wolljacken;
• 27 September 1942: mit Margot bin ich nicht mehr so intim becomes: mit Margot verstehe mich nicht sehr gut;
• 28 September 1942: bestürzt replaced by erschüttert;
• 7 November 1942: ohne den Hergang zu kennen becomes: ohne zu wissen, worum es ging and Er ist mein Ideal becomes: Er ist mein leuchtendes Vorbild. That last change of the text is not lacking in savour, if one knows that it is a question here of Anne’s father. Mr Frank is no longer an “ideal” for his daughter, but “a shining model”! Another change: und das Ärgste ist becomes: und am schlimmsten ist;
• 7 August 1943: I pointed out above (see page 104) this very long letter that contains two stories. I suppose that these stories existed in the manuscript which had been reserved for them and that they had been wrongly inserted into the Diary. In that case, one asks oneself who wrote the nine lines of introduction, where Anne asks her correspondent especially if she believes that her stories are going to please children.

88) These last changes were made from one German text to another German text. They could therefore not have the excuse of a clumsy or whimsical translation. They prove that the Diary’s author – the term that I ordinarily use for the person responsible for the text that I am reading – was still alive in 1955. In the same way, in discovering the German text of 1950 (Lambert-Schneider edition), I discovered that the author of the Diary (an especially prolific author) was still alive in 1950. That author could not be Anne Frank, who, as we know, died in 1945.

89) In any comparisons of the texts, I have followed the official chronological order. I have shown how the text printed in Dutch (1947) clashed with the first printed German text (1950), which, in its turn, underwent some strange metamorphosis in the second printed German text (1955). But, scientifically speaking, nothing proves that the chronological order of publication reflects the chronological order of composition. For example, there could have been some manuscript in German which preceded the putting together of the Dutch manuscripts. It could be that the model or the “first edition” outline had been written in German. It could be that afterwards that model or that outline, after having given birth to a text translated into Dutch, had also given birth to an entirely rewritten German text. It could be that, for several years, some very different texts had thus lived in symbiosis. That phenomenon is called the phenomenon of contamination. It is nevertheless clear that Mr Frank cannot make that argument about the contamination of the texts, because there exists, according to him, one single text: that of the Dutch manuscripts. For certain periods of the twenty-five months at the Prinsengracht, it is possible that the different manuscripts of the Diary offer us some variant readings; still, those variant readings could not provide us with the innumerable absurdities and inconsistencies that we have seen. For other periods, such as that of an entire year (from 6 December 1942 to 21 December 1943), when, according to Mr Frank’s own admission, we have at our disposal only one version, there ought not to exist the slightest variant reading, not the slightest disagreement between text D and text G. It is for that reason that I chose from that period the largest number of my examples of inconsistencies.

90) I have noted, in my samplings, neither more nor fewer inconsistencies for that period than for the other periods. In a uniform way, text D presents us an Anne Frank who has, if not the traits, at least fits the stereotype of the young adolescent, while text G offers us the stereotype of the adolescent already near, in certain respects, to being a mature woman. There are, in text G, some passages that are incompatible with the corresponding passages of text D, and even formally incompatible with the entire substance of all of text D. There we reach the height of the intolerable in the manipulation of texts. Here is, for example, the letter of 5 January 1944. Anne confesses that before her time in hiding, that is to say, before the age of thirteen, she had happened, while spending the night at the home of a girlfriend, to feel the need to kiss her: “ I had a strong desire to kiss her, and I did do so “ (een sterke behoefte had haar te zoenen en dat ik dat ook gedaan her). In text G there appears a girl of thirteen who is appreciably more knowing. Here, Anne asked her comrade for a night if, as a token of their friendship, they could feel each others breasts. But the comrade refused. And Anne, who appears to have practice in the matter, adds: “I still found it pleasant to kiss her and I did it” (fragte ich sie, ob wir als Beweis unserer Freundschaft uns gegenseitig die Brüste befühlen wollten, aber sie weigerte sich. Ich fand es immer sch…n, sie zu küssen, und habe es auch getan). On the sexual feelings of Anne, I recommend likewise the comparative reading of texts D and G for 7 January 1944.

It is astonishing that the Dutch reader had been deprived of so many revelations reserved by Mr Frank and Anneliese Schütz for Anne’s grandmother, who was so “aged” (see above). What of the revelations again in text G on musical tastes or on musical knowledge that the Dutch did not have the right to know (for what reason, after all?)! Text G of the letter of 9 June 1944 reserves for us the sole rights to a dissertation of 200 words on the life of Liszt (treated, by a very feminist Anne, as a “petticoat chaser”/Schürzenjäger), of Beethoven, Wagner, Chopin, Rossini, Mendelssohn. Many other names are mentioned: Hector Berlioz, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac The entry of 20 February 1944 (220 words) is absent from text D. It contains however some elements of very great importance from many points of view. Dussel has the habit of whistling das Violin-Konzert von Beethoven; the use of time on Sundays is revealed to us; it must be recognized that one point, at least, about that use of time is more than troubling: Mr Frank in overalls, on his knees, brushing the carpet with such enthusiasm that the entire room is filled with clouds of dust (Vater liegt im Overall auf den Knien und bürstet den Teppich mit solchem Elan, dass das ganze Zimmer in Staubwolken gehüllt ist). In addition to the noise that such an operation would cause in a place where even at night, when the neighbours are not there, it is necessary not to cough, it is obvious that the scene is described by someone who could not have seen it: a carpet is never brushed in that way on the floor of a room, in the very place where it became dusty. In the entry of 3 November 1943, a fragment of 120 words, which is missing in text D, reveals to us another case of the carpet being brushed each evening by Anne in the Ofenluft (the air from the stove), and that because the vacuum cleaner (der Staubsauger) ist kaputt (that famous vacuum cleaner which, according to Mr Frank, could not have existed; see above). Concerning Anne’s knowledge or ideas on the subject of historical or political events, one will make some discoveries in the entries of 6 June, 13 June and 27 June 1944. On Peter’s character one will find some revelations in the entry of 11 May 1944. That entry of 400 words does not exist in text D. But nevertheless, in text D, we find a letter at that date of 11 May; however, the corresponding text is dated, in text G, on 12 May! Peter defies his mother while calling her “the old lady” (Komm mit, Alte!). Nothing like the Peter of text D!

91) It would be interesting to subject each of the principal characters of D and of text G to analysis by psychologists or psychiatrists. Anne, in particular, would appear under some profoundly contradictory character traits. But this is purely hypothetical. I think that in fact those analysts would see that Anne has no more real consistency than a total invention of unrelated facets. The few so-called descriptions of Anne that I have been able to find have especially convinced me that their authors have read the Diary very superficially. It is true that the dullness of their descriptions could be explained by the dullness of the subject described. One stereotype calls for another, as one lie calls for another.

92) The language and the style of D strive to be characteristic of a young adolescent, innocent and awkward. The language and the style of text G strive to be characteristic of an adolescent already close, in certain respects, to being a woman. That is evident simply from the parts of the texts that I have mentioned — parts that I did not choose, however, with a view to studying the language and the style of the two Anne Franks.

93) Mr Frank has indulged in some storytelling. That is easily established when one sees how he has transformed the printed German text of 1950 (Lambert-Schneider) in order to make from it the text printed by Fischer (1955). It was on that occasion, in particular, that he made his daughter Anne say that her father is her “ideal” (1950 version); then, after thinking it over, that he is her “shining model” (1955 version). This inclination for storytelling did not come to Mr Frank all at once. He had, we are told by one of Anne’s former teachers, the harmless idiosyncrasy of composing stories and poems with his daughter (“Sometimes she told me stories and poems which she had made up together with him,” Anne Frank: A Portrait in Courage, page 41). That happened in about 1940. Anne was eleven years old and her father was 51. In 1942, Mr Frank, a former banker in Frankfurt and a former merchant and businessman in Amsterdam, took a forced retirement at the age of 53. I do not think that his inclination for writing had disappeared then during his long days of inactivity. In any case, the Diary hardly gives us any information about what Mr Frank did with his days. But what does it matter! Mr Frank is a storyteller who has given himself away. The drama of storytellers is that they add more to their stories. They never stop retouching, reworking, cutting out, correcting. By doing this they end up incurring the distrust of certain people. And it is child’s play for those people to prove the storytelling. It is very easy to confound Mr Frank. It is sufficient to have at hand text D and one of the two different versions of text G. It is enough to remind him that he had declared in writing to the Dutch: “I guarantee to you that here, on such and such a date, Anne wrote: day or shoes or butter cakes or fascist or large,” while to the Germans he has gone on to declare in writing regarding the same places and the same dates: “I guarantee to you that Anne wrote: night or books or candy or giant or small.” If Mr Frank told the truth in the first case, he told a story in the second case. And vice-versa. He has told a story either here, or there. Or again — and this is the most probable — he has made up the story here and there. In any case, one could never claim that Mr Frank, in this affair of the Diary, is a man who has told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

94) The Diary cannot be in any way authentic. Consultation with allegedly authentic manuscripts is unnecessary. As a matter of fact, no manuscript in the world could certify that Anne Frank succeeded in the miraculous feat of writing two words at the same time and — what is more — two words with incompatible meanings, and — even more — two complete texts at the same time, which are most of the time totally contradictory. It is well understood that every printed text can have a critical apparatus with its variant readings, its explanatory notes, its indications of the existence of possible interpolations, etc. But I have already said (see above) that where one has at one’s disposal only one manuscript, there are no longer any possible variant readings (barring specific cases: difficulties in deciphering a word, errors in preceding editions, etc.). And when one has at one’s disposal several manuscripts (two, at the most, for certain periods of the Diary; perhaps three in some very limited cases), it is sufficient to eliminate those periods and those cases in order to confine oneself strictly to the periods and to the cases where it is necessary to be contented with a single manuscript (here, the period from 6 December 1942 to 21 December 1943).

95) To the hypothesis, henceforth inconceivable, according to which there would exist an authentic manuscript, I say that none of the printed texts can claim to reproduce the text of the manuscript. The following table establishes, in fact, that the Fischer edition of 1955 comes in the eighth position in the order of succession of the varying forms of the Diary. To understand this table, refer especially to the discussion starting on page 93.

(“Official”) Chronological table of successive forms of the text of the Diary

1. The manuscript of Anne Frank;
2. Copy by Otto Frank, then by Otto Frank and Isa Cauvern;
3. New version of the copy by Otto Frank and Isa Cauvern;
4. New-new version of the copy by Albert Cauvern;
5. New-new-new version by Otto Frank;
6. New-new-new-new version by Otto Frank and the “Censors”;
7. Contact edition (1947);
8. Lambert Schneider edition (1950), radically different from the preceding one, and even incompatible with it;
9. Fischer edition (1955) taking up again the preceding one in a “discreetly” (?) reworked and retouched form.

One could, of course, claim that 5 was perhaps only a very faithful copy of 4. The same for 7 in relation to 6. That would be to suppose that Mr Frank, who reworked this text constantly, had suddenly refrained from doing it at the moment of recopying text 4 without any witness, and at the moment of the probable correction of the printer’s proofs for 7. Personally, I maintain these nine stages as a minimum to which it is necessary indeed to add one, two or three “copies” for text 8.

96) The only interest in a study of the manuscripts allegedly by Anne Frank would be to bring to light some elements still more crushing for Mr Frank: for example, some letters or fragments of letters that have never been published (the reasons for non-publication should be inquired into closely, without trusting in the reasons given by Mr Frank, which always have a very suspicious sentimental colouring); for example also, some very changeable names for Anne’s “correspondents” (the idea of showing her always addressing herself to the same “dear Kitty” seems to be a belated idea), etc.

97) The reasoning that would consist in claiming that in the Diary there would exist nevertheless a basis of truth would be a reasoning without value. First, because it would be necessary to know that truth or to be able to distinguish it in the jumble of the obvious fictions; the lie is, most often, only the art of adapting the truth. Then, because a work of the mind (as, for example, the editing of a “diary”) is not defined by a basis, but by a unity of forms: the forms of a written expression, the forms which an individual has given to it once and for all, for better or for worse.

98) The reasoning that would consist in saying that there have only been a few hundred changes between such and such form of the Diary is fallacious. The word “changes” is too vague. It allows, according to the taste of each person, all sorts of condemnations or, especially, all sorts of excuses. Furthermore, a change can involve, as we have seen, a single word or a text of 1,600 words!

99) For my part, I have called attention to several hundred changes, only between the Dutch text and either of the two texts — which differ from each other — that have been published in Germany. I call those changes: additions, subtractions, transferences, and alterations (by substitutions of one word for another, of one group of words of another — these words and these groups of words being incompatible with each other, even if indeed, by the rarest exception, the meaning could be maintained). The whole of these changes must affect approximately 25,000 words of the Fischer text which itself must be 77,000 words (that is, in any case, the number which I take for a base).

100) The French translation of Het Achterhuis can be called a “translation” in spite of the absence of one of the 169 entries of the Dutch Contact edition and notwithstanding indeed some weaknesses and also some bizarre things which lead one to think that there still could be some troublesome discoveries to be made. (Journal d’Anne Frank, Het Achterhuis, translated from the Dutch by T. Caren and Suzanne Lombard, Calmann-Levy, 1950, printed 5 January 1974, 320 pages.) The Lambert Schneider edition cannot in any event be presented as a translation. As to the Fischer edition, it cannot call itself a reproduction of the Lambert Schneider edition, nor a translation of Het Achterhuis.

101) That impressive ensemble of additions, subtractions, transferences, alterations; those fictions of Mr Frank; those dishonesties of the editors; those interventions of outsiders, friends of Mr Frank, the existence of two such different books presented as one and the same Diary of Anne Frank — all these reveal a work which cannot, in any way, retain the prestige attached to an authentic testimony. The inconsistencies of the various texts are of all kinds. They concern the language and the style, the length and the form of the pieces that make up the Diary, the number and the kind of anecdotes reported, the description of the premises, the mention of material realities, the dialogues, the ideas exchanged, the tastes expressed; they concern the very personalities of the principal characters, to begin with the personality of Anne Frank, a personality which gives the impression of living in a world of pure fiction.

102) While offering himself as personal guarantor of the authenticity of this work, which is only fiction, Mr Frank, who has besides obviously intervened at all stages of the genesis of the book, has signed what it is appropriate to call a literary fraud. The Diary of Anne Frank is to be placed on the already crowded shelf of false memoirs. Our post-war period has been fertile in works or writings of this kind. Among those false, apocryphal, or suspicious works (either entirely, or by insertions of foreign elements) one can mention: the various “testimonies” of Rudolf H…ss, Kurt Gerstein, Miklos Nyiszli, Emmanuel Ringelblum, the memoirs of Eva Braun, Adolf Eichmann, Walter Schellenberg, but also the document entitled “Prayer of John XXIII for the Jews”. One must mention especially the false diaries fabricated by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and denounced by the French historian Michel Borwicz, of Polish Jewish origin; among those diaries could appear that of one Therese Hescheles, aged thirteen.

103) l would be careless in forgetting that one of the most celebrated fakes was fabricated against the Jews: the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I ask that people not misunderstand the direction that I have given to my research on the authenticity of the Diary of Anne Frank. Even if my personal conviction is that the work comes from Mr Frank; even if I think that at the rate of two letters per day, three months would have been enough for him to prepare the first version of his clumsy fiction; even if I think that he did not believe that his work would know such an immense success (which, at the same time, would risk causing its terrible faults to become evident); even if I think that one can then find many extenuating circumstances for him; even if I have the conviction that he did not at all seek to make up a vast hoax, but that he found himself dragged along by circumstances to guarantee all the extraordinarily brilliant results of a humble and banal undertaking — in spite of all that, the truth obliges me to say that the Diary of Anne Frank is only a simple literary fraud.

 

French editor’s postscript (1980)

The report you have just read was not destined for publication. In the mind of Professor Faurisson, it only constituted one piece, among others, of a work that he intended to devote to the Diary of Anne Frank.

We publish it today — in spite of the reticence of its author who, for his part, would have hoped for a more extended publication including some elements which are still being worked on because the French press and the foreign press have created an uproar about the professor’s opinion on the Diary of Anne Frank. The public itself may feel the need to judge these pieces. We have thus wished to put the essential part of these pieces at its disposal. You can thus make for yourself your own judgments on Faurisson’s methods of work and on the results to which they had led him by August of 1978.

This report, in the exact form under which we publish it, already has an official existence. It was in August of 1978 that it was sent, in its German version, to the lawyer Jürgen Rieger to be presented as evidence at a court in Hamburg. Mr Rieger was and still remains today the defender of Ernst Remer, subjected to a trial for having publicly expressed his doubts as to the Diary‘s authenticity.

The court, after having heard the parties and having begun to examine the basis of the litigation, decided, to everyone’s surprise, to adjourn any new session sine die.

According to the usual scenario, from the time the trial opened the press dictated to the court the conduct to follow. The Social Democratic Party of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt went into the front lines of the battle and in a long open letter vigorously took a position in favour of Mr Frank. For this political party the cause was judged in advance, and the authenticity of the Diary had been proved a long time ago.

The court in question, in spite of the efforts of Mr Rieger to start the trial once more, has never rendered its judgment. The German press deplored the fact that Mr Otto Frank still had to wait for “justice to be done.” Still, this refusal to judge constitutes progress. In a similar case, Professor Faurisson had drawn up a five-page report summarising his research and his conclusions about the “gas chambers.” That statement was signed and the signature was notarised. The professor had gone so far as to cite the text of the French government’s Journal officiel establishing that a legalisation of signature in France was valid in West Germany. A waste of effort: in its holdings the Court ruled that “Faurisson” was only a pseudonym. For the same reason it refused the testimony of the American professor Arthur R. Butz. Justice is equal for all, subject to the exceptio diabolica.

***

Photographic documentation as presented in Serge Thion (ed.),
Vérité historique ou vérité politique ?, La Vielle Taupe, Paris 1980