Suspicions
Quite a lot of people must have known that Jews were being hidden on the Prinsengracht. For example suppliers of daily goods, who would have seen the large amounts of vegetables, bread, meat etc. being purchased to maintain the people in hiding. There must have also been neighbors who suspected something. After all, it is almost impossible to live with eight people in one house for two long years and go completely unnoticed.
Anne writes:
'We wouldn't care what Mr. Van Maaren thought of the situation except that he's known to be unreliable and to possess a high degree of curiosity. He's not one to let himself be fobbed off with a flimsy excuse.'
Warehouse Employees
The most obvious suspects would be amongst Opekta's staff. The four helpers - the office personnel - were of course completely aware of the situation, but the workers in the warehouse on the ground floor had not been told. They were a constant source of concern to those in hiding: “Don’t they notice something?”, “Can they be trusted?”
Now, I no longer need to know who betrayed us all those years ago in Amsterdam.
Otto Frank
An inquisitive man
The people in hiding are especially suspicious of one of the warehouse employees: Willem van Maaren. He seems to be a very inquistive man. He suspected that in the evenings, people came to the warehouse. Anne: "He places books and bits of paper on the very edges of things in the warehouse so that if anyone walks by they fall off." Everyone thought they could not trust van Maaren. They suspect that he is the person within the company that betrayed the people in hiding.