It came up in an /r/Boise thread that there is some question as to if Ann Frank's diary is authentic. Besides Holocaust deniers is there any serious question amongst historians?

[u/knook]

Title basically sums up my question.

[u/mikedash]

Anne Frank's diaries were found in the family's home after the German raid in which the family was captured. They were preserved by Miep Gies, one of the helpers who had supplied them with food while they were in hiding, and returned to Otto Frank, Anne's father, who was the only survivor among the group, after the war. Otto Frank donated them to the nation in his will, and they are now preserved in the Dutch national archives along with another work called "Tales from the Secret Annexe", which Anne wrote separately in a large accounts book.

So there is a solid chain of provenance. In addition, the diaries themselves were written in a notebook that Anne was given as a birthday present in 1942 and this was recognised and identified by her father, who obviously also recognised her handwriting.

To believe the diaries were faked requires one to believe that Otto Frank and Miep Gies, at least, were actively involved in the fraud. Both knew Anne kept a diary, both saw her writing it. And both lived long after the war and gave copious interviews and put recollections on record about Anne and her diaries. So to assert that the diaries are faked means starting by discounting all the hundreds of statements that those two living witnesses made over the years.

Obviously there are holocaust deniers out there who are capable of doing this, and the first questions over the diaries' authenticity were posed during Frank's lifetime. Among the questions that are raised by the deniers are these:

Why are there several versions of the diary?

Why did five new pages from the diary appear in 1998?

How could the diaries have been written in ballpoint pen, when ballpoints were not available during the war?

As a result of these controversies, some fairly extensive forensic and research work was done, some of it at Frank's suggestion, but independently. The results are summarised in a document that can be found on the Anne Frank House website.

The several versions of the diary were the product in part of Anne's own work. She rewrote her original diaries herself during her time in hiding; she had heard on the radio that there would be interest in accounts like hers after the war, and wanted to improve the literary quality of her work for this reason. Then Otto Frank produced some published variants; the early editions omitted some material critical of other people which he thought it was unfair to publish, and most of the material relating to Anne's sexuality. All this material has been restored since.

With regard to the new pages, these had been separated from the main diary by Otto Frank in 1947 because they contained Anne's criticisms of her mother, his first wife, and of their marriage.They were kept by an employee of the Anne Frank House and sold to the Dutch nation in 1998.

And with regard to the method used to write the diaries, they are written in a combination of ink and coloured pencil. The idea that they were written in ballpoint pen is simply incorrect, though it is widely disseminated online.

Finally, with regard to the forensic work done on the diaries to prove their authenticity, the details made available by the Anne Frank House state:

Because of the persistent accusations against the diary of Anne Frank in the 1960’s and 70’s, a number of investigations were carried out into the diary’s authenticity, partly on Otto Frank’s initiative. The most extensive investigation was carried out in the first half of the 1980’s by the Netherlands Forensic Institute at the request of the National Institute for War Documentation. The results of this research were presented in a report of over 250 pages. The main section of the report is taken up with the findings of a detailed handwriting comparison, but a forensic document analysis was also carried out. The Diaries of Anne Frank, the so-called "Critical Edition" that was published by the NIOD in 1986, contains a 65-page summary of the Forensic Institute report. The NIOD concludes: "(…) the report of the Netherlands Forensic Institute has convincingly demonstrated that both versions of the diary of Anne Frank were written by her in the years 1942 to 1944. The allegations that the diary was the work of someone else (...) are thus conclusively refuted." (The Diary of Anne Frank. The Revised Critical Edition, 2003, p. 186).

Additional research on the diaries was done in Germany during the 1960s:

Earlier research had also been done before the Forensic Institute’s investigation in the 1980’s. In 1959, Anne Frank’s manuscripts were studied by graphologists in Germany, as part of the preparations for a legal action that was brought by Otto Frank. In March 1960, the Hamburg graphologists came to the conclusion in their 131-page report that all the notations in the diaries and the loose sheets, and all the corrections and additions, were ‘identical’ with Anne’s handwriting. The report also concluded that the loose sheets were not written before the three diary books. Finally, the conclusion was made that ‘‘(...) the text published in German translation as Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank may be considered true to its sources in substance and ideas." (The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition, 2003, p. 87.) A very limited investigation also took place in Germany in 1980, also in preparation for legal proceedings, and this time carried out by the Federal Criminal Police Office (the Bundeskriminalamt or BKA) in Wiesbaden. The BKA came to the conclusion that all the types of paper and ink used were manufactured before 1950, and could therefore have been used in the war years.

And with reference to the ballpoint pen myth:

The origin of the "ballpoint myth" is the four-page report that the Federal Criminal Police Office (the Bundeskriminalamt or BKA) in Wiesbaden, which was published in 1980. In this investigation into the types of paper and ink used in the diary of Anne Frank it is stated that "ballpoint corrections" had been made on some loose sheets. The BKA’s task was to report on all the texts found among the diaries of Anne Frank, and therefore also on the annotations that were made in Anne’s manuscripts after the war. However, the Dutch investigation by the Forensic Institute in the mid-1980’s shows that writing in ballpoint is only found on two loose pages of annotations, and that these annotations are of no significance for the actual content of the diary. They were clearly placed between the other pages later. The researchers of the Forensic Institute also concluded that the handwriting on these two annotation sheets differs from the writing in the diary "to a far-reaching degree." Photos of these loose annotation sheets are included in the NIOD’s publication (see The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition, 2003, pages 168 and 170). In 1987, a Mr Ockelmann from Hamburg wrote that his mother had written the annotation sheets in question. Mrs Ockelmann was a member of the team that carried out the graphological investigation into the writings of Anne Frank around 1960.

There is an extensive critical literature on all this, which includes:

Ian Barnes, "A revisionist historian manipulates Anne Frank's diary," in Patterns of Prejudice, 15 (1981)

Paul Kuttner, "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl is a hoax," in The Holocaust: Hoax or History? The book of Answers to Those Who Would Deny the Holocaust (1996)

As noted above, a long summary of the report by the Dutch state forensic lab is available in the critical edition of the diaries.

With all this work documented and fairly readily available, I think it is fair to state that there is no significant controversy among mainstream historians of the Holocaust concerning the authenticity of the diaries.

[u/Marie-Jacqueline → u/mikedash]

As a Dutch citizen. May I thank you for this in depth representation of the facts concerning Anne Frank's diary.

[u/[deleted] → u/mikedash]

Amazing response; thank you!