Karl Silberbauer
Karl Josef Silberbauer ( born June 21, 1911 in Vienna, † September 2, 1972 ibid ), SS Technical Sergeant in the Security Service (SD ), was the police officer who arrested Anne Frank and her family on August 4, 1944 in Amsterdam.
Biography
Silberbauer served in the Austrian Army before joining the police force in 1935. Four years later, Silberbauer joined to the German Reich the Gestapo shortly after the Anschluss. 1943, the year of his accession to the SS, he moved to the Netherlands and worked for the Security Service in The Hague.
On 4 August 1944 Silberbauer was ordered to pursue the remark that in the back building of the Dutch branch of the German company Opekta, Prinsengracht 263, some Jews were hidden. He took some officials with him and asked there first Victor Kugler. Miep Gies was questioned, but then left behind when Kugler, brought John Kleimann, Anne Frank, her parents and her sister, Margot Frank, Hermann van Pels was arrested with his wife and son and Fritz Pfeffer and into the SD Prison in Euterpestraat were. From there the prisoners were deported to the Westerbork transit camp and later to Auschwitz and Bergen- Belsen. Only Anne's father Otto Frank, Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman survived. In April 1945, Silberbauer returned to Vienna, where he was fourteen months in prison. In 1954, he was readmitted to the Vienna police.
Simon Wiesenthal began in 1958, to search for the man who had arrested Anne Frank, Holocaust deniers to prove the existence of Anne Frank. 1948 interviewed two SD Officials could remember in a first study on the word " silver " from Silberbauer's name. Wiesenthal asked Otto Frank for his help, he refused, however, because he was of the opinion that it is not her Verhafter, acting on the orders and had Otto Frank's claims to behave "correctly" during the arrest, but their traitors should be sought. Wiesenthal sought still further and received during a stay in Amsterdam from a friend an articulated by department telephone directory of the Gestapo. On the return flight to Vienna, he found in it several Silberbauer, one of which was used in a department in Amsterdam: Karl Josef Silberbauer. Wiesenthal was then able to track in 1963 in his hometown of Vienna in the 50 Karmarschgasse him. Silberbauer confirmed the arrest of Anne Frank. A procedure was opened against him in 1964 but stopped because he had acted on orders. Silberbauer died 1972.
Work for the Federal Intelligence Service
Silberbauer has since 1945 worked for the Federal Intelligence Service, as well as its precursor, the Gehlen Organization. Relevant documents have been found by the Hamburg publicist Peter- Ferdinand Koch in American archives.