Miep Gies, Anne Frank protector, dies at 100

[Gaybutton]

Miep Gies, Anne Frank Protector, Dies at 100

 

January 12, 2010

 

(CNN) -- Miep Gies, who ensured the diary of Anne Frank did not fall into the hands of Nazis after the teen's arrest, has died. She was 100.

 

Gies was among a team of Dutch citizens who hid the Frank family of four and four others in a secret annex in Amsterdam, Netherlands, during World War II, according to her official Web site, which announced her death Monday. She worked as a secretary for Anne Frank's father, Otto, in the front side of the same Prinsengracht building.

 

The family stayed in the secret room from July 1942 until August 4, 1944, when they were arrested by Gestapo and Dutch police after being betrayed by an informant. Two of Gies' team were arrested that day, but she and her friend, Bep Voskuijl, were left behind -- and found 14-year-old Anne's papers.

 

"And there Bep and I saw Anne's diary papers lying on the floor. I said, 'Pick them up!' Bep stood there staring, frozen. I said, 'Pick them up! Pick them up!' We were afraid, but we did out best to collect all the papers," Gies said in a 1998 interview with The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.

 

"Then we went downstairs. And there we stood, Bep and I. I asked, 'What now, Bep?' She answered, 'You're the oldest. You hold on to them. So I did."

 

The girl had chronicled two years of the emotions and fears that gripped her during hiding, as well as candid thoughts on her family, her feelings for friend-in-hiding Peter van Pels, and dreams of being a professional writer. Mixed into the entries were the names of the Dutch helpers, who risked their lives to keep the family's secret.

 

"I didn't read Anne's diary papers. ... It's a good thing I didn't because if I had read them I would have had to burn them," she said in the 1998 interview. "Some of the information in them was dangerous."

 

The diary was sheltered in Gies' desk drawer and later turned over to Otto Frank when he returned after the war as the only surviving resident of the annex. Anne died at northern Germany's Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

 

Her father published her diary, titled "The Secret Annex," in 1947.

 

Despite the legendary hardship she endured during the German occupation, Gies never embraced the label of a hero.

 

"More than 20,000 Dutch people helped to hide Jews and others in need of hiding during those years. I willingly did what I could to help. My husband did as well. It was not enough," she says in the prologue of her memoirs, "Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family."

 

"There is nothing special about me. I have never wanted special attention. I was only willing to do what was asked of me and what seemed necessary at the time."

 

Gies' husband, Jan, whom she married in 1941, died in 1993. The couple had a son together.

[Bob]

Despite the legendary hardship she endured during the German occupation, Gies never embraced the label of a hero.

 

"There is nothing special about me. I have never wanted special attention. I was only willing to do what was asked of me and what seemed necessary at the time."

 

Always something special about persons like this who doesn't see their acts as "heroic" but simply behaving as anyone ought to do under the circumstances. A true hero - and I'm sure the Franks family would feel the same.

[Guest lvdkeyes]

Undoubtedly, risking her life to help others is what heroism is all about.

[Guest fountainhall]

It's almost impossible for us in 2010 to imagine the enormity and horror of much of what happened during the 2nd World War. We often hear about people in desperate situations doing desperate things. But equally, such situations can bring out in the most ordinary of people an extraordinary courage. Were I ever to find myself in that sort of situation, I hope I might find the courage to act in the same way. But where that courage would come from, I wish I knew.

[Guest lvdkeyes]

Anyone traveling in Europe should make a point of touring one of the concentration camps for an eye opener. I have been to Mauthausen and Dachau. Dachau being the most spine chilling of the two.

[Gaybutton]

Although it was never authorized as an official account of her life by her relatives, probably the best film ever done about the entire story, ranging from prewar, to the discovery of their hiding place, to what took place during the arrest, to what happened to them afterward, and continuing to Anne Frank's death at the Belsen concentration camp, and on to Otto Frank's return to Amsterdam, was "Anne Frank: The Whole Story." It also includes an accurate account of what Miep Gies went through during the the time the family was hiding to what she went through after the hiding place was discovered.

 

I think that film is far better than "The Diary of Anne Frank," which was more of a play than a truly realistic account of what actually happened.

 

If the story interests you, "Anne Frank: The Whole Story" is a film definitely worth seeing if you can get it.

 

Also, there are several documentaries and interviews with Miep Gies on YouTube.

[Guest fountainhall]

Anyone traveling in Europe should make a point of touring one of the concentration camps for an eye opener. I have been to Mauthausen and Dachau. Dachau being the most spine chilling of the two.

For those who cannot make it to Germany or Poland, a hop across the border to Cambodia will have a similar effect. Visit the school in Phnom Penh which became the infamous Tuol Sleng prison. Here something like 17,000 were admitted and only 7 came out alive. The rest were shipped off to the Killing Fields where there is a heart-wrenching monument filled with skulls. Man's inhumanity to man knows few limits.

[Rogie]

. . .the Killing Fields where there is a heart-wrenching monument filled with skulls. Man's inhumanity to man knows few limits.

 

Quite so.

 

The museum at Auschwitz, where the possessions of those sent to the gas chambers is exhibited behind glass in a series of huge display cases, is equally chilling. There are displays of photographs and piles of battered suitcases, and thousands of spectacles, hair and shoes collected from the bodies.