A book claimed to identify Anne Frank's betrayer as a local Jewish "leader" who might have given her family up to save his own. But publication was put on hold after questions about the quality of its scholarship, and now it's been cancelled entirely after a thorough denunciation by experts tasked with reviewing the evidence.
"There is not any serious evidence for this grave accusation," the experts found.
In response, Dutch publishing house Ambo Anthos said the book would no longer be available and asked bookshops to return their stocks.
The publisher offered its "sincere apologies" to those offended by the book's content, while the granddaughter of Van den Bergh has called on HarperCollins to drop the English-language edition.
"With this story, you are exploiting the story of Anne Frank, you are falsifying history and you are contributing to great injustice," she said.
Two red flags from the outset: the identification was made with the help of an AI startup, and the flashy tie-in 60 Minutes presentation was more like an episode of Cold Case Files than a documentary.
