Karl Josef Silberbauer (June 21 1911 – 1972) was a
NaziNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
SDThe Sicherheitsdienst was primarily the intelligence service of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was often considered a "sister organization" with the Gestapo, which the SS had infiltrated heavily...
officer holding the rank of
SSThe , abbreviated SS- or - was a major Nazi organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. The SS grew from a small paramilitary unit to a powerful force that served as the Führer's "Praetorian Guard," the Nazi Party's "Shield Squadron" and a force that, fielding almost a million men ,...
-
OberscharführerOberscharführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that existed between the years of 1932 and 1945. Translated as “Senior Squad Leader”, Oberscharführer was first used as a rank of the Sturmabteilung and was created due to an expansion of the enlisted positions required by growing SA membership...
, when, serving in the occupied Netherlands he arrested
Anne FrankAnnelies Marie "Anne" Frank was a Jewish girl who was born in the city of Frankfurt am Main in Weimar Germany, and who lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam, in the Netherlands...
and her family in their hiding place in 1944.
Life
Born in
ViennaVienna is the capital of the Republic of Austria and also one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.7 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 10th largest city by...
, Silberbauer served in the
Austrian militaryThe Österreichs Bundesheer , is the name for the military of the Republic of Austria....
before following his father into the police force in 1935. Four years later, he joined the
GestapoThe was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning in April 1934, it was under the overall administration of the Schutzstaffel under Heinrich Himmler in his position as leader of the SS and Chief of German Police...
, moved to the
NetherlandsThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
and in 1943 transferred to the SD in
The HagueThe Hague is the third largest city in the Netherlands after Amsterdam and Rotterdam, with a population of 485,818 and an area of approximately 100 km²...
.
On August 4 1944, he was instructed by his superior, Julius Dettmann, to investigate a tip-off that
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
s were being hidden at Prinsengracht 263. He took a few officers with him and interrogated
Victor KuglerVictor Kugler was one of the people who helped hide Anne Frank and her family and friends during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In Anne Frank's posthumously published diary, The Diary of a Young Girl, he was referred to under the name Mr...
about the entrance to the hiding place.
Miep Gies"Miep" redirects here. For The Hungarian Justice and Life Party, see MIEPMiep Gies, née Hermine Santrouschitz , is one of the Dutch citizens who hid Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis during World War II. She discovered and preserved Anne's diary after Anne Frank's arrest and deportation...
was also questioned, but allowed to stay on the premises after Kugler and his associate
Johannes KleimanJohannes Kleiman was one of the Dutch citizens who helped hide Anne Frank and her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In the published version of Anne's diary, The Diary of a Young Girl, he is given the pseudonym Mr. Koophuis...
, together with
Otto FrankOtto Heinrich "Pim" Frank was the father of Anne and Margot Frank. As the sole member of his family to survive the Holocaust, he inherited Anne's manuscripts after her death, and arranged for the publication of her diary in 1947.-World War I:Born into a banking family in Frankfurt am Main, Frank...
,
Edith Frank-HolländerEdith Frank-Holländer was the mother of Anne Frank and Margot Frank.- Early life :...
,
Margot FrankMargot Betti Frank was the older sister of Anne Frank, whose deportation order from the Gestapo hastened the Frank family into hiding, and who subsequently perished in Bergen-Belsen. Margot was also keeping a diary as mentioned by Anne Frank in her diary...
,
Anne FrankAnnelies Marie "Anne" Frank was a Jewish girl who was born in the city of Frankfurt am Main in Weimar Germany, and who lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam, in the Netherlands...
, Hermann van Pels, Auguste van Pels, Peter van Pels and
Fritz PfefferFriedrich "Fritz" Pfeffer was a German dentist and Jewish refugee who hid with Anne Frank during the Nazi Occupation of the Netherlands, and who perished in the Neuengamme concentration camp in Northern Germany...
were arrested and taken to Gestapo headquarters. From there, they were sent to
Nazi concentration campsNazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps were greatly expanded in Germany after the Reichstag fire in 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
. Of the ten, only Otto Frank, Kugler and Kleimann survived.
Silberbauer returned to Vienna in April 1945 to begin serving fourteen months in prison for his activities of helping deport Jews during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. He was reinstated by the Viennese police force in 1954, two years after the
English languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
publication of
Anne Frank's diaryThe Diary of a Young Girl is a book based on the writings from a diary written by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The family was apprehended in 1944 and Anne Frank ultimately died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen...
.
Simon WiesenthalSimon Wiesenthal KBE was an Austrian-Jewish architectural engineer and Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter who pursued Nazi war criminals in an effort to bring them to justice.Following four and a half years in the German concentration camps such...
's search for the man who had arrested Anne Frank began in 1958 when he was challenged by
Holocaust deniersHolocaust denial is the claim that the genocide of Jews during World War II—usually referred to as the Holocaust—did not occur at all, or that it did not happen in the manner or to the extent historically recognized....
to prove the existence of Anne Frank by finding the Nazi who caught her. His name had been disclosed in 1948 during the initial investigation into the betrayal and arrest of Anne Frank, her family, the four people she hid with, and two of their protectors. The Dutch SD
detectiveA detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators...
s who had assisted with the raid were identified by Johannes Kleiman, Victor Kugler and Miep Gies. The two men said they remembered nothing about it, other than the name of their superior, Karl Silberbauer.
Wiesenthal requested the help of Anne's father,
Otto FrankOtto Heinrich "Pim" Frank was the father of Anne and Margot Frank. As the sole member of his family to survive the Holocaust, he inherited Anne's manuscripts after her death, and arranged for the publication of her diary in 1947.-World War I:Born into a banking family in Frankfurt am Main, Frank...
, who refused on the grounds that their betrayer, not the arresting officer, should bear the blame. Wiesenthal disagreed, and in October 1963, after two years of eliminating fourteen other Austrians with the same name, he tracked Silberbauer to Vienna. Silberbauer was suspended from the police force pending an investigation into undeclared Nazi activities during the war. When the Dutch media learned of his whereabouts, they descended on his home and he admitted to them that he had arrested Anne Frank. The story was broken to the world's media on November 11 1963, and an investigation into the identity of the betrayer was reopened.
Silberbauer's memories of the arrest were notably vivid - he in particular recalled Otto and Anne Frank. When he asked Otto Frank how long they had been in hiding, Frank answered "Two years and one month." Silberbauer was incredulous, until Otto stood Anne against the marks made on the wall to measure her height since they had arrived in the annex, showing that she had grown even since the last mark had been made. Silberbauer said that she "looked like the pictures in the books, but a little older, and prettier. 'You have a lovely daughter', I said to Mr. Frank" (
Roses from the Earth, pp. 245-246).
Silberbauer had only been told by his superiors that the tip came from a 'reliable source' and was unable to provide any information that could help further a police investigation. His superior officer, Julius Dettmann, who had originally taken the call, committed suicide immediately after the war. The Viennese authorities and the Amsterdam police could not produce enough evidence of criminal misdemeanor to prosecute Silberbauer himself, and given Otto Frank's crucial declaration that Silberbauer had obviously acted on orders and behaved correctly and without cruelty during the arrest, the judicial investigation was dropped. His suspension from the police force was lifted and he returned to work.
Sources
- The Critical Edition of the Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank, edited by David Barnow, 2003
- Anne Frank House: a museum with a story, Anne Frank Foundation 1999
- Roses from the Earth, Carol Ann Lee