HarperCollins scoops Anne Frank investigation

HarperCollins has acquired world rights to “landmark publication” Anne Frank: A Cold Case Diary, promising fresh evidence on how the Frank family were discovered.

The book explores who or what led to the arrest of the Frank family and will be published in summer 2020 by Harper in the US, William Collins in the UK and by HarperCollins simultaneously in 13 languages around the world. 

The book features new technology and investigative techniques led by Vincent Pankoke, a retired American FBI agent, who oversaw an international team of police and FBI detectives, criminologists, forensic scientists, FBI profilers, data scientists, psychologists, Artificial Intelligence (AI) programmers and renowned historians. The book has been supported partly through public donations with various appeals for information on the Cold Case Diary website.

Pankoke and his team have discovered Nazi documents, previously thought to be lost, as well as unknown connections to the Frank family, “all of which combine to shed a whole new light on the case”, according to a HarperCollins spokesperson.

The investigation is supported by organisations from all over the world such as the Anne Frank Foundation, the Dutch Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the United States Holocaust memorial museum; and various others. 

Sara Nelson, v.p. and executive editor at Harper, acquired the book from the Marianne Schönbach Literary Agency in the Netherlands, which is representing Proditione Media, a production company.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, the journal the teenager kept while in hiding with her family during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam, has been read by millions.  The Franks and four other people hiding with them were apprehended in 1944, and Anne Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945 aged 15. The diary was retrieved by Miep Gies, who gave it to Anne's father, Otto Frank, the family's only survivor, just after the war. The diary has since been published in more than 70 languages.  

Jonathan Burnham, president and publisher at Harper, said: “This is a milestone acquisition for HarperCollins worldwide; its publication is sure to make a huge impact both in the US and globally. We’re extremely excited to be working on such a significant project, a book which promises to change the way we view history.”

“The story of Anne Frank has haunted me all my life,” said Nelson. “Her diary, which I read in grade school, was the first I understood of World War II and one of the most important books of my childhood. 

“I’m fascinated by the new materials the investigators have found, and the groundbreaking methods and technology they’re using to rethink a story I, and millions of other readers, thought they knew.”

David Roth-Ey, executive publisher, 4th Estate & William Collins, said: “This promises to be a landmark publication, and we at William Collins are thrilled to be supporting this effort to tell the final chapter of an extraordinary girl’s story."

HarperCollins has acquired world rights with the exception of Dutch, Hungarian and Serbian languages. As part of its global publishing program, it will publish in the English language around the world as well as in German, Italian, French, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Polish and Japanese.