A Swiss foundation, the Anne Frank Fonds, is moving to add Otto Frank as the legal co-author of his daughter’s diary, The Diary of Anne Frank. The move would have an immediate monetary effect. The copyright is set to expire throughout Europe on January 1, 2017. European copyrights expire 70 years after the artist or author’s death. If Otto Frank is added as a co-author, the foundation would hold the copyright throughout the end of 2050. Anne Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. Otto Frank died in 1980. Some critics say that the addition of a co-author, who the foundation now says edited and combined entries in the diary, is synonymous with admitting a lie that Anne had been the sole author of the book. The American copyrights on The Diary of Anne Frank would be unaffected by the move, as it currently end in 2047.
It was the use of a ball point pen that gave it away. They were not even in use at the time Anne would have written the diary. I believe the saying goes, the first casualty of war is always the truth.