Reviews with content warning for Antisemitism - The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation

Reviews tagging 'Antisemitism'

The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation by Rosemary Sullivan

14 reviews

kaitlinmarie27's review

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dark emotional informative mysterious sad medium-paced

4.5

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queerloras's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

I found this absolutely fascinating. I've had an interest in the story of Anne Frank for years, having read The Diary of a Young Girl aged about 10 or 11. What I found most interesting was the insights into how the bureaucracy of the Nazi regime's hunt for Jews worked - the SD, the Jewish Councils, the V-Frauen and -Mannen. It was desperately sad at the same time as gripping. And as much as it's interesting that a likely suspect has been identified - I don't actually care.

As the writers of the book say, the man in question was a victim of the Nazis, not a perpetrator, and was most likely doing what he was forced to in order to keep his own family safe, something nobody could vilify him for.

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natalieba's review

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informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.0

Recently, I was struggling to decide on my next read, so I went to the StoryGraph - you can filter through your TBR list to find books for a certain mood, length, format, etc. So I asked it to find books I own that fit what I felt like reading and this one popped up (with a few others). I grabbed the recs from my shelf and sat down to read a few pages of each, starting with The Betrayal of Anne Frank. Well, I didn’t even get to sample the other books because this one sucked me right in!

The book seeks to discover who betrayed the Franks - telling the Nazis where they were hiding. There are many, many theories and the author follows the investigative team as they explore them all. I knew Anne Frank’s story from her diary, which I (like many I’m sure!) read as a young girl. The author provides an overview of the Frank family’s lives prior to their move to the Annex, the time they spent in hiding (over two years), their discovery, and (for all but Otto Frank) their deaths in a concentration camp, but most of the book is spent running down leads right alongside the team of international investigators.

It was an engrossing, if heartbreaking read, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys true crime (though I wouldn’t necessarily include myself in that group TBH).

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