From the frightful day in 1944 when the Jewish Frank family was discovered hiding from the SS in a secret section of Otto Frank’s store in Amsterdam, there has been a mystery surrounding who had turned in the family to the Nazis. Now, a team of 20 researchers lead by ex-FBI agent Vince Pankoke believes that the mystery can be solved by the 75th anniversary of the Frank family’s arrest using artificial intelligence.

Since the popularization of the Frank family’s tragedy as described in Anne Frank’s posthumously published diary, many amateur and academic theories have been considered regarding the identity of those responsible for sending the family to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps. These theories have, however, been fundamentally limited by a lack of evidence due to the destruction of records by a British air raid in 1944.

Pankoke believes that his team, crowdfunded with the help of prominent media figures Thijs Bayens and Pieter Van Twisk, will be able to resolve the matter. He reportedly discovered several records that were supposedly destroyed in the 1944 air raid, containing “lists of names of Jews arrested having been betrayed, lists of informants and the names of various Gestapo agents living in Amsterdam.”

The team is also attempting to examine information that may have been previously unknown to the investigators, providing a website for individuals to upload any documents they have that might help. Pankoke wants to use “artificial intelligence algorithms” to prioritize and analyze the amount of data being considered, considering more than any previous investigation.

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Thomas Evans

Article by Thomas Evans

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