Arts & Entertainment The Unseen Villain New book about Anne Frank's fitther makes strong case for real identity of Frank family's betrayer. SUZANNE CHESSLER The author traveled, on many occa- sions, from her home in England to Amsterdam, where she now lives with new book about Anne her husband and family, to probe Frank's family has spurred a records in the city where the Frank government investigation in family hid before being turned in to the Netherlands. the Nazis. Carol Ann Lee, author She also talked to of The Hidden Life of many of the people Otto Frank (William mentioned in the Morrow; $26.95), pres- book and those ents considerable new related to the man information about the she is convinced was father of the famed the Franks' betrayer. diarist, but she has drawn Lee explains that most attention for identi- Ahlers, with a crimi- fying Tonny Ahlers as the nal reputation before most likely person to have the war, was a mem- revealed the Franks' hid- ber of the Dutch ing place to the Nazis. Nazi network, and Lee's conclusion has the she describes how Netherlands Institute for her original conclu- War Documentation sion. was affirmed in doing independent track- interviews with the ing with a findings report man's son after he due on the Web (wvvw.niod.n1) this read the first edition of her book. month, and an English translation of The scope of the historical work, the findings to come. revised since being published first in Lee, 33 and a Christian, has been the Netherlands and second in Great fascinated with the Frank story since Britain, goes well beyond the evidence childhood with her first reading about of the betrayal. It suggests reasons that Anne. That interest, combined with Ahlers might have received secret pay- an interest in writing, sparked a quest ments from Otto Frank after the war for more information that ultimately and throughout the time the diary was led to her previous books, Anne Frank's gaining international attention as black- Story and Roses from the Earth: The mail for not revealing Frank's business Biography of Anne Frank, as well as the dealings with the. German army before recent release. the family went into hiding. Special to the Jewish News A While portraying Frank as a devoted father, Lee also delves into his two marriages, ties with those close to him and negotiations to turn Anne's diary into a book, play and film. Bringing more controversy are accu- sations that he interfered with a search by Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal for Karl Josef Silberbauer, the German Gestapo officer who led the arrest of the Frank family in 1944. The book probes whether Frank, a native of Germany, could have thought that Silberbauer was only fol- lowing orders. Lee, touring the country with her book, answered questions about this project for the Detroit Jewish News JN: How did you come to write this book? CAL: I had written a biography of Anne Frank a few years ago and went to Switzerland to give a talk about it. Someone in the audience suggested that my next book should be about Otto Frank, and once I started researching, it completely took me over. JN: What did you want to communi- cate about Otto Frank? CAL: I wanted to show his strengths and weaknesses and the interesting life he had that nobody knew about. He was actually quite a complex man. He had to deal with so many difficult sit- uations, and I think he dealt with them all in a very interesting way. JN: What new information are you most sure of as a result of your research on Otto Frank? CAL: I'm extremely proud to have found a diary that Otto kept himself from the time of his liberation from Auschwitz until he came back to Amsterdam in the summer of 1945. I found it in the archives of the Anne Frank Foundation. Although there are many moving Holocaust memoirs that are written after the event, this is the only account I know that traces a survivor's journey as it's happening. I'm also proud to have uncovered an incident that occurred in Otto's life in 1941. We all know that the Franks were betrayed in 1944 when they were in hiding, but in 1941, Joseph Jansen, a former employee of Frank, unsuccess- fully tried to betray Otto to the SS. That has never come out before, and it's a very dramatic story. (The book alleges that Ahlers, a Gestapo insider, intercepted Ja-nsen's letter to the SS, beginning Ahler's extortion of Otto Frank.) JN: Do you think that readers could still have reasonable doubt that Ahlers was the betrayer? CAL: There is room for doubt in all theories. At the same time, I would not have put this theory across if I had not believed in it myself. There are so many paths that lead Left to right: Otto Frank as a German soldier during World War I. Otto Frank, right, sole survivor of the eight in hiding, reunited with his brothers and sister in Switzerland after the war. 2/28 2003 64 Wedding of Otto and his second wife, Fritzi, Nov. 10, 1953, in Amsterdam. A previously unpublished photo of Anne Frank, taken shortly before the family went into hiding. Anne pasted it onto the last page of her first diary.