Miep Gies: Difference between revisions

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	'''Miep Gies''', née '''Hermine Santrouschitz''' (born 15 February 1909), is one of the ] citizens who hid ] and her family from the ] during ]. She discovered and preserved ] after Anne Frank's arrest and deportation.		'''Miep Gies''', née '''Hermine Santrouschitz''' (born 15 February 1909), is one of the ] citizens who hid ] and her family from the ] during ]. She discovered and preserved ] after Anne Frank's arrest and deportation.

	==Biography==
	Born Hermine Santrouschitz in ], ], Miep was transported to ] in the ] from Vienna in December 1920 to escape the food shortages prevailing in Austria after ]. In 1922 she moved with her foster family to ]. There, in 1933, she met ] when she applied for the post of temporary secretary in his spice company, ]. She initially ran the Complaints and Information desk in Opekta, and was eventually promoted to a more general administrative role. She became a close friend of his family, as did ], whom she married on 16 July 1941 after she refused to join a Nazi women's association and was threatened with deportation back to Austria. Her knowledge of ] and ] helped assimilate the Frank family into life in the Netherlands, and she and her husband became regular guests at the Franks' home.

	With her husband, and her colleagues, ], ], and ], Miep Gies helped hide ] and Otto Frank, their daughters ] and ] Frank, ] and ], their son ], and ] in the sealed-off back rooms of the company's office building on Amsterdam's ] from July 1942 until August 4 1944.

	In theory, Miep and the other helpers could have been shot if they had been caught hiding Jews. In practice, however, those caught hiding Jews were more commonly sentenced to four to six months of ]. On the morning of 4 August 1944, an anonymous informant told the ] about the people hidden at Frank's place of business. All those in hiding, as well as Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman, were arrested. Three separate criminal investigations after the ] all failed to identify the informant. Miep avoided arrest because the officer, who came to question her, was Austrian and because Miep was also originally from Austria and felt a connection to her. Later, Miep unsuccessfully tried to bribe the Austrian Nazi officer with money in exchange for releasing her friends.

	Miep found the discarded diaries of Anne Frank and saved them in a desk drawer for Anne's return. Once the war was over and it was confirmed that Anne had perished in ], Gies gave the collection of papers and notebooks that made up the diary to the sole survivor from the ], Anne's father, Otto Frank; he arranged for the book's publication in 1947. Miep did not read the diaries herself before turning them over to Otto Frank, and later remarked that, if she had, she would have had to destroy them because of the incriminating information in them. She was, however, persuaded by Otto Frank to read Anne's diary in its second printing.

	Once the book was published and widely translated, Miep and Jan Gies became celebrities in the Netherlands, and their courage was recognized with awards from several international organisations. Among others, they won the ] Award for Bravery and the ] award. In 1994, Miep Gies received the ]; in 1995, she was awarded the ] medal, and, in 1997, she was knighted by ].

	During the making of the documentary film '']'', which was based on Miep Gies autobiography of the same name, Peter Pepper, the son of Fritz Pfeffer, was able to meet Miep Gies for the first time. After his parents divorced, Pepper was raised by his father, until his father felt it was too dangerous for him to remain in Germany, and in 1938 sent him to London to live with his uncle. By the end of the war he had lost most of his close family, including his father, and his mother, who had died in Theriesienstadt. Pepper made the decision to move to the United States. He settled in California, and founded a very successful office supply business. In December, 1994, during the production of ''Anne Frank Remembered'', Pepper, upon meeting Miep Gies, expressed his thanks to her for attempting to save his father's life. Pepper died of cancer just two months later.

	Her only child, Paul Gies, was born on 13 July 1950.

	She has continued her humanitarian work since then. Her husband Jan Gies died in 1993 from ].

	Miep Gies was recently portrayed by actress ] in a scene in the successful 2007 ], '']'', based on a visit she made to students in a ] ] in the late 1990s.

	Miep Gies currently lives in the Dutch province of ]. According to Carol Ann Lee's biography of Otto Frank, ''The Hidden Life of Otto Frank'', Mrs. Gies no longer grants interviews after enduring a bout of severe ill health.

Revision as of 02:39, 5 February 2009

Miep Gies
Born	Hermine Santrouschitz (1909-02-15) 15 February 1909 (age 115) Vienna, Austria
Occupation	Humanitarian
Spouse(s)	Jan Gies, (1905–1993) (m. 1941–1993)
Children	Paul Gies (1950)

Miep Gies, née Hermine Santrouschitz (born 15 February 1909), is one of the Dutch citizens who hid Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis during World War II. She discovered and preserved Anne's diary after Anne Frank's arrest and deportation.

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