After the war, many people accused the Jewish Council of cooperation, indeed almost collaboration, with the Germans, insisting that it protected the elite at the expense of poor and working-class Jews. The council picked the people to be deported, and it picked the people to be exempted from deportation. However, the council’s supporters claimed that at least they gave Jews a modicum of control over their lives and a way to negotiate with the Germans.
But the truth was that there had always been a deep division in the Jewish community over tactics. At the beginning of the occupation, the JCC and the Jewish Council coexisted for several months, but there was strong friction between the two organizations. The JCC accused the Jewish Council of being an instrument of the Germans, while the Jewish Council believed that the JCC had no power whatsoever, indeed had abdicated power, because it did not wish to negotiate with the Germans. The Jewish Council members insisted that if they entered into a dialogue with the occupiers, they might gain some influence and could possibly prevent, mitigate, or delay some of the Germans’ oppressive measures and somehow retain something of their dignity. They feared that if they ignored or even revolted against the rules the Germans were introducing, their fate would be much harsher. In October 1941, the German authorities disbanded the JCC.
In retrospect, much of the surviving Jewish community in the Netherlands concluded that the Jewish Council had been a weapon in the hands of the Nazis. It had had hardly any influence and delayed nothing. But of course, such a judgment is easy in retrospect. There was no blueprint in the Netherlands for survival under an occupying enemy regime. In the end, Cochairman David Cohen admitted that he “had misjudged the unprecedented, murderous intentions of the Nazis.”8
35
A Second Look
The Cold Case Team regularly worked on several scenarios at one time, so while Monique was running names through the AI to establish connections to Westerbork, Pieter and several young historians were in the archives searching the files of persons related to their own scenarios. Vince was back in the office, going through the forty-page summary Detective Van Helden made of his 1963–64 investigation when something jumped out at him. Van Helden mentioned that Otto Frank had told him he’d received a note shortly after the liberation denouncing a betrayer. It was unsigned. Apparently, Otto told him he’d made a copy of the note and given the original to a board member of the Anne Frank House. In his summary, Van Helden had written out the text of the anonymous note as follows:
Your hideout in Amsterdam was reported at the time to the Jüdische Auswanderung [Jewish Emigration] in Amsterdam, Euterpestraat by A. van den Bergh, a resident at the time at Vondelpark, O Nassaulaan. At the J.A. was a whole list of addresses he submitted.1
Vince had known about the note from prior readings of the file, but the Cold Case Team had not yet made it a priority in the investigation.2 The A. van den Bergh mentioned in the note was a member of the Jewish Council, which was abolished in September 1943, virtually all of its members shipped off to various concentration camps. Even if Van den Bergh had information about the Annex, he would not have been likely to wait a year to pass it on, and, further, if he’d somehow passed it on before he had been deported, it’s not likely that the SD would have waited eleven months before acting on the tip. Then a search of the Bad Arolsen （ITS） terminal at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum revealed that neither Van den Bergh nor any of his immediate family were listed in any of the concentration camps’ archives. They were never deported or interned in a camp. If Van den Bergh was still living at his old address in Amsterdam, might he have had the opportunity to pass on the list of addresses referred to in the note?
Vince decided that the team needed to pursue both the information in the anonymous note and the provenance of the note itself. Was the text Van Helden wrote out in his report the complete note? Where was the original note or at least the copy Otto said he had made? It certainly wasn’t in the full police file. As for Van den Bergh, Vince fed his name into the AI program, which connected him to a woman who’d been employed as a secretary for the Jewish Council: Mirjam Bolle. She was 101 years old and living in Israel.
Bolle had written a book titled Letters Never Sent, published in English by Yad Vashem in 2014; part of it described her time with the Jewish Council. After he learned of her background, Vince said he thought that if he could interview her, she might offer a unique perspective on how the council functioned. He also wanted to find out more about Van den Bergh, whom, presumably, she’d known personally. Was Van den Bergh very active on the Jewish Council? Did she know what happened to him, which concentration camp he was sent to, whether he survived the war?