World

It was meant to put one of World War II’s greatest mysteries to rest, but instead a new book about young diarist Anne Frank has stirred up ghosts from the past.

A heated debate has erupted over “The Betrayal of Anne Frank” by Canadian author Rosemary Sullivan after it named a Jewish notary as the prime suspect in giving up Anne and her family.

Dutch historians and Jewish groups have criticised the “sensationalist” book, the result of a six-year cold case investigation, while its local publisher has halted further reprints.

But the former FBI agent who led the probe, Vince Pankoke, angrily hit back this week alleging that the “venomous attack” may have been motivated by the book’s controversial conclusion that a Jew was responsible.

The book caused an international storm when it was published on January 18 with its claims about the betrayal of Frank, a Jewish teen whose diary was published after her death in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

It identified Amsterdam notary Arnold van den Bergh, a Jew, as “most likely” the man who in 1944 gave up the location of the canalside annexe where Frank penned her diary during two years in hiding, most likely to save his own family from the Nazis.

Researchers said they used modern criminal investigative techniques, complex algorithms and witness statements — and most tellingly a note given to Anne’s father Otto shortly after the war which named Van den Bergh.

– ‘Speculative’ –

But there was a fierce reaction in the Netherlands, which is still haunted by guilt over the deportation of more than 100,000 Jews during the war.

The results were “extremely speculative and sensationalist”, the Amsterdam-based Central Jewish Consultation (CJO) organisation said.

“There is no smoking gun or hard evidence. The findings are… mainly based on one note, written after the war,” CJO chairman Ronny Naftaniel told AFP.

Van den Bergh died in 1950 and “cannot defend himself”, Naftaniel said, adding that the investigation “would never stand up in a court of law”.

Jewish organisations in the Netherlands have asked that the book be removed from local shelves, and the Swiss-based Anne Frank Fonds foundation president John Goldsmith told Swiss daily Blick the findings “bordered on a conspiracy theory”.

The book’s Dutch publisher Ambo Anthos last week said it was putting all reprints on ice and apologised “for not adopting a more critical stance”, local media reported.

The publisher did not respond to a query from AFP.

Dutch holocaust historians also raised doubts.

“Although the research is impressive, the story simply has too many loose ends,” Johannes Houwink ten Cate, professor of genocide and holocaust studies at the University of Amsterdam, told AFP.

Documents showed Van den Bergh and his family went underground by the beginning of 1944, months before the Nazis arrested the Franks, said Ten Cate.

“Why would Van den Bergh later risk giving up his own hiding place? It’s beyond belief.”

– ‘Disparaging remarks’ –

But those behind the book, published internationally by HarperCollins, struck back this week.

Author Sullivan said in a statement on Monday that the probe was “professional” and “thorough”, adding that the book was a “compelling portrait” of a time when people faced impossible choices to save their families.

Pankoke meanwhile insisted that his team’s theory remained the most plausible, in a statement on Wednesday.

“I was shocked at the disparaging remarks put forth by critics of our investigation,” he said, adding that it was “now time for me to respond and set the record straight.

“At least in our theory, there is a pattern of evidence, backed by witness statements, and a copy of a piece of physical evidence presented… by Otto Frank himself,” said Pankoke.

One of the main reasons for the furore was the contention that “Jews were forced to turn against one another”, along with a misunderstanding about how criminal investigations are conducted, he said.

But he too stressed that by identifying a suspect, they were not necessarily condemning him.

“Our message from the very beginning of our investigation was, and always will be, had it not been for the Nazi occupiers, none of this would have happened,” Pankoke said.

As tens of thousands of Russian troops mass near Ukraine’s border, many in fellow ex-Soviet state Georgia are feeling a frightening sense of deja vu.

In 2008, during the Summer Games in Beijing, Russia launched a devastating ground assault against the small Caucasus country on its southern border.

Georgia was battling pro-Russian militia in its separatist region of South Ossetia, after they shelled Georgian villages.

The fighting in August 2008 only lasted several days, but claimed more than 700 lives and displaced tens of thousands of ethnic Georgians.

Today Georgians are seeing frightening parallels as Western capitals warn of another possible Russian attack on Ukraine.

“It’s horrible what we see these days in Ukraine,” said Zina Tvaladze, a mother of two displaced from separatist-controlled South Ossetia.

“It looks like Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to shed the blood of Ukrainians and of his own soldiers just because he wants to restore the Soviet Union,” she said. 

In 2008, the 53-year-old told AFP, the separatists “burned our house as Russian troops nearby watched. We were lucky to escape execution.”

At the centre of both crises is a years-old Western promise that the two ex-Soviet countries would be able to join the US-led NATO military alliance.

Just three months before the Georgian war, NATO heads of state had agreed that both Ukraine and Georgia would “become members of NATO”.

The move angered Putin, who views any expansion towards Russia’s borders as a security threat, despite the West stressing that NATO is purely a defence organisation.

– ‘Solidarity’ –

The 2008 fighting in Georgia ended after just five days with a European Union-mediated ceasefire.

The Kremlin recognised independence for the two breakaway statelets of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and established permanent Russian military bases there.

Several years later, in 2014, Russian troops annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.

They began backing Kremlin-friendly separatists in Ukraine’s east in an ongoing conflict that the United Nations says has since killed 13,000 people.

More than 13 years after the war in South Ossetia, China is holding the Winter Olympics.

As European leaders scramble to avert any Russian invasion, Georgian politicians have been voicing solidarity with Ukraine.

President Salome Zurabishvili last week criticised Russia’s policy of “provocation,” saying it posed a threat to both Georgia and Europe at large.

Georgia understands “very well what the people of Ukraine feel today”, she said.

“This is solidarity from a country that has already suffered and is still suffering from occupation” by the Russians.

But for some in the small Black Sea country, words are not enough.

Mamuka Mamulashvili fought against Russian forces in South Ossetia in 2008. 

Today, he is the commander of the “Georgian Legion”, a unit of some 100 former Georgian soldiers fighting in the Ukrainian army.

“Many Georgians have enrolled in the Ukrainian military,” he told AFP.

“We are fighting for Ukraine, but also for Georgia’s freedom,” he said, adding that a dozen Georgian volunteers have died fighting separatists in Ukraine since 2014.

– ‘Next trophy’? –

Analyst Gela Vasadze said the Ukraine crisis was worrying “deja vu for Georgians”.

“There is a consensus in Georgia that the fall of Ukraine would spell the end of Georgia’s statehood,” he said.

Putin has dismissed claims that Russia plans to attack Ukraine, but demanded “security guarantees” that include the reversal of NATO’s promise to admit Ukraine and Georgia to the 27-nation military bloc.

Fourteen years on from that assurance, however, the two pro-Western nations are still not on a formal membership path.

“The United States has so far rejected Putin’s demands to close NATO’s doors to Ukraine and Georgia,” but any membership still “remains a distant — if not unlikely — prospect,” Vasadze said. 

For many Georgians, the stakes are high.

Nona Mamulashvili, a leader of Georgia’s main opposition party, said Putin’s goal now was to force the West to break ties with both Ukraine and Georgia.

“Georgia’s fate is being decided today in Ukraine,” said the member of the United National Movement. 

Tvaladze, the woman displaced from South Ossetia, feared a Russian victory in Ukraine could embolden Putin to finish what he started in Georgia.

“If Ukraine is defeated, Georgia will be his next trophy,” she said.

Australia officially listed koalas across a swathe of its eastern coast as “endangered” on Friday, with the marsupials fighting to survive the impact of bushfires, land-clearing, drought and disease.

Conservationists said koala populations had crashed in much of eastern Australia over the past two decades, warning that they were now sliding towards extinction.

Environment Minister Sussan Ley said she had designated koala populations as “endangered” to offer them a higher level of protection in New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and Queensland.

The koala, a globally recognised symbol of Australia’s unique wildlife, had been listed as “vulnerable” on the eastern coast just a decade earlier.

“We are taking unprecedented action to protect the koala,” the minister said, highlighting a recent government promise of Aus$50 million (US$36 million) to protect and recover koala habitats.

Environmentalists welcomed the koalas’ new status but condemned Australia’s failure to protect the species so far.

“Koalas have gone from no-listing to vulnerable to endangered within a decade. That is a shockingly fast decline,” said WWF-Australia conservation scientist Stuart Blanch.

“Today’s decision is welcome but it won’t stop koalas from sliding towards extinction unless it’s accompanied by stronger laws and landholder incentives to protect their forest homes.”

Conservationists said it was hard to give precise figures on koala populations in the affected eastern states.

But estimates by an independent government advisory body — the Threatened Species Scientific Committee — indicated that koala numbers had slumped from 185,000 in 2001 to just 92,000 in 2021.

– ‘Losing a national icon’ –

Alexia Wellbelove of the Humane Society International said east coast koalas could be extinct by 2050 if no action was taken. 

“We can’t afford any more clearing,” she said.

The Australian Conservation Foundation said its own research showed that the federal government had approved the clearing of more than 25,000 hectares of koala habitat since the species was declared vulnerable a decade ago.

“Australia’s national environment laws are so ineffective they have done little to stem the ongoing destruction of koala habitat in Queensland and NSW since the species was supposedly protected a decade ago,” said the foundation’s nature campaign manager, Basha Stasak.

“The extinction of koalas does not have to happen,” Stasak added.

“We must stop allowing their homes to be bulldozed for mines, new housing estates, agricultural projects and industrial logging.”

Australia’s koalas had been living on a “knife edge” even before the devastating “Black Summer” bushfires of 2019-2020 because of land-clearing, drought, disease, car strikes and dog attacks, said Josey Sharrad, wildlife campaign manager at the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

“We should never have allowed things to get to the point where we are at risk of losing a national icon,” Sharrad said.

“The bushfires were the final straw. This must be a wake-up call to Australia and the government to move much faster to protect critical habitat from development and land-clearing and seriously address the impacts of climate change.”

Protester numbers outside New Zealand’s parliament swelled Friday as police scaled back efforts to clear anti-vaccine demonstrators involved in violent clashes a day earlier.

A festive mood prevailed at a makeshift tent settlement inhabitants have dubbed “Camp Freedom”, with music and dancing as police looked on from behind barricades.

It was a stark contrast to the fiery scenes Thursday, when a phalanx of officers attempted to evict the protesters, arresting 122 people and using pepper spray to quell scuffles.

Wellington police described the hands-off tactics as a “measured approach”, pointing to the presence of children among the crowd.

“Police are continuing to monitor and contain protest activity at parliament grounds,” Superintendent Corrie Parnell said in a statement.

“Police have identified a range of different causes and motivations among the protestors, making it difficult to open clear and meaningful lines of communication.”

Activists have been camped on the lawns of parliament for four days in a protest that began Tuesday as a copycat of a “Freedom Convoy” action by Canadian truckers in Ottawa.

The parliamentary precinct has been declared closed to the public but the measure has not been strictly enforced and the number of protesters on the lawns increased from about 250 to around 1,500 throughout Friday.

A protester named Carrie, who declined to give her surname, said the activists remained committed to their goal of ending vaccine mandates.

“The way the police handled us has shocked us all to the core,” she told AFP.

“What they did yesterday was way beyond any of our expectations. Brutal, absolutely brutal.”

New Zealand requires mandatory Covid vaccinations for people working in sectors such as health, law enforcement, education and defence, with those who refuse the jab facing the sack.

Proof of vaccination must also be shown to enter restaurants, sports events and religious services.

The top diplomats of the United States, Australia, Japan and India opened talks in Melbourne Friday on deepening their Quad alliance, hoping to blunt China’s expanding power across the Asia-Pacific region.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison kicked off the day by highlighting the group’s importance in building cooperation among democracies, while making a thinly-veiled allusion to his country’s troubled relationship with Beijing.

“We live in a very fragile, fragmented and contested world,” he told the visiting officials.

“We stand up to those who would seek to coerce us,” he said.

Without mentioning China by name, Morrison said it was a “great comfort” that the three fellow Quad members understand “the coercion and the pressure that Australia has been placed under.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that even though Russia’s threat to Ukraine occupies Washington right now, the longer-term issue is China’s rising power.

“To my mind, there’s little doubt that China’s ambition over time is to be the leading military, economic, diplomatic and political power not just in the region but in the world,” he told The Australian newspaper on the eve of the talks.

– Tech, health, climate –

The Quad was first launched in 2007, but only took root a decade later after China aggressively projected its military power into the South China Sea, and following violent border clashes with India.

While the four held joint naval exercises in 2020 in the Bay of Bengal, the meetings in Melbourne are aimed at deepening cooperation across other fields like fighting Covid-19 and coordinating on critical information technology issues, including the global rollout of 5G telecommunications networks.

Blinken said they were seeking to develop and “affirmative vision” on a range of challenges, such as agreeing on technology standards, and cooperating on health issues and climate change. 

The Covid-19 pandemic has been central to giving the grouping greater meaning beyond its image of trying to “contain” China.

The four countries used the Quad framework to commit to distributing 1.3 billion vaccine doses, with more than 500 million already delivered, according to Payne.

As for Washington, the meeting is a chance to reaffirm its decision to make Asia and the Pacific the centrepiece of foreign and defense policy, even as the White House and Pentagon are currently consumed by the potential for a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

While Ukraine is “front and center” in Washington right now, Blinken said ahead of his arrival in Australia: “The world is a big place.”

“Our interests are global and you all know very well the focus that we put on the Asia-Pacific and the Indo-Pacific regions,” he said.