Karl Silberbauer

Karl Josef Silberbauer (21 June 1911 – 2 September 1972) was a Schutzstaffel (SS) member who led the 1944 Gestapo raid on the Anne Frank House and the arrests of Anne Frank, her fellow fugitives, and two of their protectors. He was stationed in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam during World War II, where he was promoted to the rank of Hauptscharführer (master sergeant) and after the war served 14 months in prison for using excessive force against members of the Communist Party of Austria. He was later an undercover investigator for the West German Bundesnachrichtendienst (federal intelligence service). In 1963, Silberbauer, by then an inspector in the Vienna police, was exposed as the commander of the 1944 Gestapo raid and arrests. He was not prosecuted for his participation in the arrests.

Born in Vienna, Silberbauer served in the Austrian military before following his father into the police force in 1935. Four years later, he joined the Gestapo, moved to the Netherlands, and in 1943 transferred to the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in The Hague. He was then assigned to Amsterdam and attached to "Sektion IV B4", a unit recruited from Austrian and German police departments and which handled arrests of hidden Jews throughout the occupied Netherlands. He was promoted to the rank of Hauptscharführer (master sergeant).

On 4 August 1944, Silberbauer was ordered by his superior, SS-Obersturmführer (Lieutenant) Julius Dettmann, to investigate a tip-off that Jews were being hidden in the upstairs rooms at 263 Prinsengracht. He took a few Dutch policemen with him and interrogated Victor Kugler about the entrance to the hiding place. Miep Gies and Johannes Kleiman were also questioned, and while Kugler and Kleiman were arrested and the young secretary Bep Voskuijl managed to escape with documents that would have incriminated the black market of the Secret Annex protectors, Gies was allowed to stay on the premises. She later surmised this was because she recognized and connected with Silberbauer's Viennese accent. Both Otto Frank and Karl Silberbauer were interviewed after the war about the circumstances of the raid, with both describing Silberbauer's surprise that those in hiding had been there for more than two years. Frank recalled Silberbauer confiscating their valuables and money, taking these spoils away in Otto Frank's briefcase, which he had emptied onto the floor, scattering out the papers and notebooks which made up the diary of Anne Frank.

Soon after, Kugler and Johannes Kleiman, together with Otto Frank, Edith Frank-Holländer, Margot Frank, Anne Frank, Hermann van Pels, Auguste van Pels, Peter van Pels, and Fritz Pfeffer, were arrested and taken to Gestapo headquarters in Amsterdam. From there, the eight who had been in hiding were sent to the Westerbork transit camp and then to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Soon after, Margot and Anne Frank were sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died from typhus. Victor Kugler and Jo Kleiman were sent to work camps. Of the ten, only Otto Frank, Kugler, and Kleiman survived.

Silberbauer returned to Vienna in April 1945. He served 14 months in prison for using excessive force against members of the Communist Party of Austria. After his release, Silberbauer was recruited by the West German Gehlen Organization, and spent ten years as a mole, or undercover operative for Gehlen and its successor the Federal Intelligence Service (BND). According to Der Spiegel reporter Peter-Ferdinand Koch, who learned of his postwar activities while researching BND employment of former Nazis, Silberbauer infiltrated neo-Nazi and pro-Soviet organizations in West Germany and Austria. His BND handlers believed, correctly, that Silberbauer's past membership in the SS would blind neo-Nazis to his true loyalties.

Possibly due to Gehlen Organization pressure, Silberbauer was reinstated by the Viennese Kriminalpolizei (Kripo) in 1954, four years after the German publication of Anne Frank's diary, and promoted to the rank of Inspektor.

Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal began searching for Silberbauer in 1958, upon being challenged by Austrian Holocaust deniers to prove that Anne Frank existed. One teenaged Holocaust denier stated that, if Anne Frank's arresting officer were found and admitted to it, he would change his mind.

During the 1948 Dutch police investigation into the raid on the Secret Annex, Silberbauer's name had been disclosed as "Silvernagel". The Dutch police detectives who had assisted with the raid were identified by Miep Gies, who recalled their commander as having a working-class Vienna accent. The Dutch policemen claimed to remember nothing except an erroneous form of their superior's surname.