The most direct accusation that Nelly might have known about Jews hiding in the Annex came from Bep’s boyfriend, Bertus Hulsman.13 In an interview with Dineke Stam of the Anne Frank Stichting in 2007, he remembered an argument at the family table when Nelly’s sisters “bullied [her] because she had dealing with krauts. And one time—I’ll never forget it—she shouted at the table, ‘Just go to your Jews!’ I don’t remember when exactly this was.”14
The interview took more than two hours, and the exchange between Nelly and her family was referred to in different ways. In one instance, Hulsman clarified Nelly’s exclamation: “That family relationship, there was always a field of tension. You know, all those girls. . . . And then she said, ‘You go to your Jews.’”15
At another point, Hulsman added that the remark should be taken as a more general utterance: “A sneer was made at her, and then she sneered back, ‘Go and see your Jews.’”16
He then reflected on his own uncertainty about the source of the information: “But how do I come up with that, ‘Go to your Jews,’ that happened sixty years ago? I will doubt that myself, you know [ . . . ] I hope I am wrong, that my suggestions are wrong.”17
Was Nelly’s statement, which at first appears to refer to the people in the Annex, a retort rather than a specific accusation? “Just go to your Jews!” could have been her response to her sisters or father yelling that she should go to her “krauts.” Was Nelly making it clear that she knew something? Or was she simply responding to the sympathy her father and sister Bep no doubt expressed for Jews in the occupied Netherlands?
Shortly after the liberation in May 1945, Nelly moved to the city of Groningen, not far from Amsterdam. According to Melissa Müller, she was arrested on October 26. She spent several years in custody and was not able to pick up her life again until 1953.
The Cold Case Team searched for Nelly’s CABR file. A file on every postwar conviction for political offenses is kept in the National Archives. But there was no file on Nelly Voskuijl. Vince contacted Müller to ask her for the source of her information about Nelly’s arrest and conviction. She recommended that he talk to her researcher.18
The researcher did not recall the source, either.19 During two interviews with the team, he did, however, explain his theory. According to him, Nelly Voskuijl was first held in a theater in Groningen with other young women who were suspected of collaboration. Later, according to the researcher, she was transported to a prison for about a year. The team searched the Groningen Archives but did not find any documentation or proof to back that up. According to the researcher, Nelly’s records would have been destroyed because, as a minor at the time, she would have been judged in juvenile court. Corroborating the story of Nelly being arrested is the statement by her sister Willy that she remembered being interrogated just after the war, possibly about Nelly, though she did not recall the details.20
At that time in 1945, Nelly was actually over twenty-one and would have been judged in adult court; therefore, there should have been records. To find proof of this theory or any other information on the whereabouts of Nelly during the period 1945–1953, the Cold Case Team conducted a search into postwar camps, specifically looking for young female prisoners in Groningen, and read the files on political prisoners held by the Groningen authorities.21 No direct leads pointed toward Nelly Voskuijl. The absence of a CABR file led the team to suspect that Nelly was never arrested.
One day the Cold Case Team’s researcher Circe de Bruin returned to the office in a state of high excitement. She had discovered a document indicating that Nelly Voskuijl had registered in the municipality of Groningen on October 26, 1945, the same day Müller claimed she had been arrested.22 Müller’s researcher seems to have mistakenly assumed that the registration document was the record of Nelly’s arrest.* Vince said that the roller-coaster ride from excitement to letdown is a normal part of any investigation, but he was somewhat disappointed. Had Nelly been arrested, her CABR file would have provided a narrative of her activities and her German contacts during the war. Whether or not she took part in the Annex betrayal might have become clearer.
By fleeing Amsterdam, Nelly passed under the radar and evaded conviction for whatever crimes of collaboration she might have committed. At the very least, she escaped the fate of women who had had sexual relationships with Germans. Dragged from their houses, their heads shaved, they were drawn in carts through the city streets as bystanders shouted abuse.