Miep Gies

Miep Gies

1909–2010

On Aug. 4, 1944, when the Gestapo raided the Amsterdam annex in which 15-year-old Anne Frank and her family hid during World War II, they left behind the diary that Anne had kept for more than two years. Miep Gies, who had helped protect the Franks, collected the diary and other pages of Anne’s writings, hoping that one day she might reclaim them. Anne never did, dying at Bergen-Belsen in March 1945. But thanks to Gies, the diary survived to become a literary classic and a testament to human courage.

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Austrian-born Gies became secretary to Otto Frank, Anne’s father, a spice merchant, in 1933. “In July 1942, when thousands of Dutch Jews were being deported to concentration camps, the Frank family went into hiding in unused rooms above Frank’s office,” said The New York Times. “He asked Gies if she would help shelter them, and she unhesitatingly agreed.” With three other Frank employees, “she found food for them, brought books and news of the outside world, and provided emotional support.” Gies managed to escape arrest after the Franks were caught; when Otto Frank, the sole survivor, returned to Amsterdam after the war, Gies gave him the diary, which was first published in 1947.

In her later years Gies traveled the world, speaking against intolerance and accepting honors from West Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, and other nations. But in her memoir, Anne Frank Remembered, she insisted, “I am not a hero. I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did and more—much more—during those dark and terrible times.”