HarperCollins is under pressure to pull a book which claimed to reveal who betrayed Anne Frank after its findings were discredited.

       The book’s investigating team suggested that a Jewish man called Arnold van den Bergh was responsible for her and her family’s arrests during the Second World War.

       The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation said that Van den Bergh had probably given up the Franks’ hiding location to save his own family.

       Its investigating team, led by a retired FBI investigator, spent six years trying to crack the cold case.

       Anne was a Jewish girl who wrote a diary about her two years in hiding before she, and seven other Jews, were captured by the Nazis in August 1944. She died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

       Her diary was published posthumously by Otto, her father, to worldwide critical acclaim and has been translated into 60 languages.

       However, The Betrayal of Anne Frank has since been recalled by its Dutch publisher after its findings were discredited.

       ‘Research does not stand up to scrutiny’

       A new report by a team of historians and Second World War experts said its research does not stand up to scrutiny, and published a report contradicting the book’s findings, calling its work “amateurish”.

       “There is not any serious evidence for this grave accusation,” the experts found.

       In response, Ambo Anthos, the Dutch publishing house, said that the book would no longer be available and asked bookshops to return their stocks.

       The publisher offered its “sincere apologies” to those offended by the book’s content, while Van den Bergh’s granddaughter has called on HarperCollins to drop the English-language edition.

       She said: “With this story, you are exploiting the story of Anne Frank, you are falsifying history and you are contributing to great injustice.”

       The book’s investigating team has previously stood by its research, saying it never claimed to have uncovered the complete truth.

       Pieter van Twisk, the chief investigator, told Dutch news agency ANP: “Our theory is a theory and nothing more.”

       HarperCollins failed to respond to requests for comment.