famous diary captured two years of hiding in the attic above the
store, but it ended on August 4, 1944, when their hiding place
was betrayed. It was an anonymous phone call which led the Nazis
to the secret annex. On that warm summer day in 1944, four
German and Dutch security police pulled up to the warehouse at
263 Prinsengracht and asked the employee, Willem Van Maaren,
where the Jews were hiding. Van Maaren pointed up the stairs,
but the police already seemed to know exactly where to go. Hours
earlier, Karl Josef Silberbauer, the Austrian commander of the
squad, received a phone call from the head of the Amsterdam
security police who said eight Jews were hiding in the
warehouse. After the arrest they were all transported to a
prison in Amsterdam, then to the camp almost 60 years, the
identity of that informant, whose call had such tragic
consequences, has remained a mystery to historians. For many
years, the employee Van Maaren was the main suspect. Later one
theory alleged the betrayer was Anton Ahlers,