Miep Gies, One of Six Non-Jews who hid Anne Frank, Dies at 100

Miep Gies, one of the six non-Jews who helped hide Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis in 1942 died Monday at age 100. According to the news report from Yahoo, she was a former office secretary for Otto Frank, Anne Frank's father in the spice business. She was born as Hermine Santrouschitz on February 15, 1909 in Vienna, Austria. When she was eleven years old she moved to Amsterdam to escape the food shortages in Austria. She had lived with the host family in Austria. They gave her the name "Miep." In 1933 Gies took a job as an office assistant in the spice business of Otto Frank. She married her Dutch boyfriend, Jan Gies in 1941 to escape deportation from Austria for refusing to join a Nazi organization. In July 1942 Otto Frank asked Gies to help hide his family in the annex above the company's canal-side warehouse on Prinsengracht 263. Miep, her husband Jan, and four other employees in the company would bring the Frank's as well as four other Jews sharing the annex food and supplies.

Gies died Monday of a neck injury as a result of her falling last month, according to the Anne Frank Museum. She was the last of the "helpers" to the Jews to still be surviving. She and six non-Jews smuggled food, books, writing paper, and news of the outside world to the secret attic apartment of the canal-side warehouse where Anne, her sister Margot, her parents, and four other Jews were hiding.

At the age of 13 Anne Frank was given a diary. She chronicled her life as a budding teenager a few weeks before she went into hiding from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944. Around August 2nd the police broke through the apartment door concealed behind a moveable bookcase. Mies was even questioned by the police. Whenever Gies went to the stores to purchase food and supplies for the Jews in hiding she would travel to different stores so she wouldn't be easily tracked down. After the Frank's were captured Gies sought for the Franks' release, but it was to no avail. On August 8th, the Frank's were sent to Westerbrook, a concentration camp in Eastern Holland. They were later packed into kettle cars and were deported to Auschwitz. Both Otto and Edith Frank stayed at Auschwitz until Otto's release. Edith died in that concentration camp. A few months later Anne and Margot were transported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Both Margot and Anne died at that camp. Anne died of typhus at age 15 in March 1945--two weeks before the camp was liberated by the British.

Following the Franks' capture, Miep gathered up the scattered diary papers and locked the papers in her desk until Otto returned in 1945. She had refused to read the papers during the war. Gies said she never read the diary until she gave the pages to Otto Frank, saying even a teenager's privacy was sacred. She later said if she had read them, she would have to burn them, because they would incriminate the "helpers". Otto published Anne's dairy in 1947. It was the first popular book about the Holocaust and has been read by millions of children and adults around the world in 70 languages. The diary was the basis for two other popular works: a 1959 movie that won three Oscars and a Pulitzer Prize winning play. Both were titled, "The Diary of Anne Frank." Anne Frank's cousin Bernd "Buddy" Elias said, "Everyday for over 20 years she (Miep Gies) put herself in danger by hiding Jews from the Nazis." "If they had caught her she would have been put in a concentration camp herself." Two of those that helped the Franks were placed in concentration camps, but they survived them. Gies never liked to be considered as a hero. She felt it was just an ordinary duty to help the Franks like she did. She stated any normal person would have done the same thing. I greatly appreciate her bravery during such a tumultuous time during World War II.

Otto Frank stayed with Mies and her family until he remarried in 1952. She helped compile the pages of the diary into a book and it was published in 1947. Gies was a very brave person and had extraordinary courage to help the Jews hide from the Gestapo during World War II. Even when Otto Frank died in 1980, she spoke out against anti-semitism and also spoke out against the false notion that the Holocaust was a myth. I remember when I was in the seventh grade we had to read the "Diary of Anne Frank" in reading class. I enjoyed it immensely. We also saw the film as well once we finished reading it. It was enjoyable to read what life was like for them while in hiding in the eyes of a young girl.