Image copyright AFP PHOTO /ANNE FRANK FONDS Image caption Anne Frank's diary has provided new hints about how and why her hiding place was uncovered 
 
 World-famous wartime diarist Anne Frank may have been discovered by chance and not because her hiding place was betrayed, a new theory suggests. Ronald Leopold, Executive Director of the Anne Frank House museum, said in a statement Friday that new research by the museum "illustrates that other scenarios should also be considered." Summarising its findings, the Anne Frank House said: "The question has always been: Who betrayed Anne Frank and the others in hiding? This explicit focus on betrayal , however, has limited the perspective on the arrest. Anne Frank's diary entries from March 1944, not previously used as a primary source, led to police and judicial documents from different parts of the Netherlands. One possible theory is that the Aug. 4, 1944, raid that led to Anne's arrest could have been part of an investigation into illegal labor or falsified ration coupons at the canal-side house where she and other Jews hid for just over two years. "A company where people were working illegally and two sales representatives were arrested for dealing in ration coupons obviously ran the risk of attracting the attention of the authorities," the researchers wrote. The young writer ultimately died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, aged 15, just weeks before its liberation.
– The answer to the question "Who betrayed Anne Frank" may be "Nobody," according to new research. A study released by the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam says that the hiding place of the Jewish teenager and her family may instead have been found by chance when Nazi security forces raided the building to investigate fraudulent food-ration cards or illegal employment, the BBC reports. The study, which counts police documents and Anne's famous diary among its sources, found that the German "Sicherheitsdienst" police that discovered the family usually investigated cases involving cash and securities, not hidden Jews, and they spent much longer at the Amsterdam building during the Aug. 4, 1944, raid than usually happened in cases like the arrest of the Frank family. "During their day-to-day activities, investigators from this department often came across Jews in hiding by chance," according to the study, which notes that there is no evidence that an anonymous phone call long thought to have betrayed the family actually happened. The study notes that two men who worked in the building were arrested earlier in 1944 for dealing in illegal ration cards, and Anne wrote about the arrest in her diary, the AP reports. There is also evidence that the German occupiers had been investigating people working at the address when they should have been sent for forced labor elsewhere. It is still possible that Anne, who died in the Bergen-Belsen camp in 1945, was betrayed, but the study "illustrates that other scenarios should also be considered," says Ronald Leopold, the museum's director. (The winning bid for this Anne Frank poem stunned auctioneers.)