Meanwhile, Vince and Brendan hoped that an examination of the note’s typeface might confirm its author and date. They contacted the international typeface expert Bernhard Haas, the son of the author of the Haas Atlas, the definitive guide to identifying typefaces. In typewriter terminology, document typeface describes the image left on paper after the striker bar has hit the ink ribbon. (In the age of computers and inkjet printers, typeface examination is a lost art, and the team was lucky to find Haas.) They briefed Haas on the investigation and informed him that they suspected the Abschrift note might have been produced by Otto Frank. Haas said that he would need either the typewriter Otto used or several original documents that Otto was known to have typed on his typewriter. The team did not hold out hope of obtaining Otto’s typewriter, since it was likely under the control of the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel, Switzerland, a group that had been unhelpful so far. The obvious solution was to turn to one of Otto’s regular correspondents.
As an American teenager in the late 1950s, Cara Wilson-Granat was so inspired by Anne Frank’s diary that she wrote to Otto Frank. She even auditioned to play Anne in the 1959 Academy Award–winning movie The Diary of Anne Frank by George Stevens, a role that was landed by Millie Perkins. Her correspondence with Otto and their friendship lasted more than two decades. In 2001, she published the letters in Dear Cara: Letters from Otto Frank.
Vince had previously spoken with Wilson-Granat about her correspondence and personal conversations with Otto and knew that she had kept his original letters. He phoned her and explained that the Cold Case Team had come into possession of a document that was possibly typed by Otto. Would she send a few of her letters so that they could be compared? She said she would, happily.
When Vince was inquiring about overnight shipping of the letters to the Amsterdam office, the shipper asked the value of the package’s contents. When he was told it was priceless, he answered, sorry, that was not one of the options. The CCT then consulted a document expert who suggested an estimated value, and the package was on its way. That night Vince spent the entire evening tracking the shipment, and the next morning he saw that it had arrived at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. His heart sank when at 8:15 a.m. he received a text that the shipment would be delayed until the next day, although the online tracking still showed that it would be delivered before 10:30 a.m. that day. He was in a bit of a panic, imagining having to call Cara to tell her that the letters had been lost or damaged. But at 9:00 a.m., the delivery truck showed up at the office, and the driver walked in and asked for a signature. Vince thought: If only he knew what was inside!
Vince and Brendan then set out on the six-hour train ride to Winnenden, a small town in the southwest of Germany where Bernhard Haas lived. They carried the note and several of Cara’s original letters. In retirement, Haas had turned the upper floor of his house into his office, decorated with a collection of antique typewriters. The tools of his trade were spread out over a large glass examination desk: a stereo microscope, spacing templates, special lights, and a magnifying glass.
The assessment took several hours. In order to examine the typeface of the Abschrift note, Haas carefully slid the note out of its protective evidence sleeve. Moving it under the stereo microscope, he turned on special lighting that would show even the finest of details. He jotted down some observations and mumbled in German as he carefully studied the typeface. He began measuring the letters, the distance between letters, and the spacing between the lines of text with a special template. He then spun around in his chair, grabbed the encyclopedia of typefaces that his father had authored from the shelf, and told Vince and Brendan that the note was an original typed document and not a copy. The typewriter used to write the note had had type defects in the letters h (at the head stroke), n (at the right foot), a (at the lower tick), and A (at the right side). He identified the type set as having been manufactured by Ransmayer & Rodrian in Berlin, Germany, somewhere between 1930 and 1951.
Haas explained that the next step was to compare the note to Wilson-Granat’s original letters. Brendan and Vince waited nervously while he muttered in German. Finally, he pushed himself back from the desk and announced that he was able to conclude with the highest forensic certainty that the note and the letters were created with the same typewriter.3 He then added something that the two investigators didn’t expect: based on the progression of certain typeface letter degradations in the Wilson-Granat letters, he concluded that the note was produced several years prior to the date of the earliest letter, 1959. (That meant that the typeface on the note was cleaner; type gets progressively dirtier as a typewriter is used.) That would confirm Otto’s statement to Detective Van Helden that he’d made a copy of the note prior to providing the original to a board member of the recently formed Anne Frank House in May 1957.
On the train ride back to Amsterdam Vince and Brendan felt a sense of satisfaction. They had proven that the note they were carrying was not just the single piece of hard physical evidence relating to the Annex betrayal; it was a piece of evidence that originated with Otto Frank.
The next task was to investigate the content of Detective Van Helden’s handwriting that appeared below the typewritten portion of the note. Between what Van Helden’s children thought their father had written and a consensus of the Dutch researchers, this is how it translated:
The original is in the possession of
or
The original is in depot 23 [handwriting unclear, but this latter is the more likely reading]
Notary v.d. Hasselt, 702 Keizersgracht (230047)
(234602)
By mail receiving in Basel whether or not via Foundation
Personal details
Likely
Already more years
Given to me on 16/12-63—
Mr. Heldring,
1 has been a member of Jewish council
among others society of nursing & care
2.Department Lijnbaansgracht (???? &)
????)
These were Detective Van Helden’s jottings to himself. The first sentence clearly states that the original note was in the possession of a notary named Van Hasselt at Keizersgracht 702, followed by two six-digit numbers. A search of the 1963 Amsterdam telephone directory confirmed that those were the address and phone numbers of Notary J. V. van Hasselt.
The words following this are not as clear but mention Basel, where Otto was living in 1963. The team interpreted the next full sentence, “Given to me on 16/12-63,” to mean that Detective Van Helden received the copy of the note on December 16, 1963, approximately two weeks after he interviewed Otto.
The team believed that “Heldring” referred to Herman Heldring, an original board member of the Anne Frank Stichting. The last portion of the note, “has been a member of Jewish council among others society of nursing & care,” appeared to be about Van den Bergh and the organization he joined after the liberation. The “Department Lijnbaansgracht” was the street location where the Jewish Council’s Central Information Office was located during the war. The translator has used “????” to indicate that two words, separated by &, followed but they are completely unintelligible.
The Cold Case Team members were now certain that they had the copy that Otto had made of the original note, but they were left with some puzzling questions: Who was this notary, Van Hasselt? Why did he end up with the original note? And why hadn’t they heard of him before?
38
A Note Between Friends