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Miep Gies (born February 15,1909, Vienna, Austria) 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.
Born Hermine Santrouschitz, she was evacuated to Leiden in the Netherlands from Vienna in December 1920 to escape the food shortages prevailing in Austria after World War I, and moved, with her foster family, to Amsterdam in 1922. There, in 1933, she met Otto Frank when she applied for the post of temporary secretary in his spice company, Opekta. 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 Jan Gies, whom she married on July 16, 1941 after she refused to join a Nazi women's association and was threatened with deportation back to Austria. Her knowledge of Dutch and German helped assimilate the Frank family into life in the Netherlands, and Miep and Jan became regular guests at the Franks' home.
With her husband, and her colleagues, Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman and Bep Voskuijl, Miep Gies helped hide Edith and Otto Frank, their daughters Margot and Anne Frank, Hermann and Auguste van Pels, their son Peter and Fritz Pfeffer in the sealed-off back rooms of the company's office building on Amsterdam's Prinsengracht 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 hard labor. On the morning of August 4th, 1944, an anonymous informant informed the Gestapo 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 war all failed to identify the informant.
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 Bergen-Belsen. Gies gave the collection of papers and notebooks that made up the diary to the sole survivor from the Secret Annexe, 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. Miep gies collects anne franks papers but once she knows anne frank has died she hands them over to otto frank.
Once the book was published and widely translated, Miep and Jan Gies became celebrities in the Netherlands, and their courage was recognised with awards from several international organisations. Among others, they won the Raoul Wallenberg Award for Bravery and the Righteous Among the Nations award. In 1994, Miep Gies received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany; in 1995, she was awarded the Yad Vashem medal, and, in 1997, she was knighted by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.
Her only child, Paul Gies, was born on July 13, 1950.
She was recently portrayed by actress Pat Carroll in a scene in the successful 2007 drama film, Freedom Writers, based on a visit she made to students in a Long Beach high school.
Miep Gies currently lives in the Dutch province of Noord-Holland.
External links
- Quicktime movie. Miep Gies, in her former office at 263 Prinsengracht, talks about the war years
- Quicktime movie. Miep Gies remembers how she met Anne Frank
- Profile of Miep Gies by the Anne Frank House
- 1998 interview with Miep Gies
- Image of Miep's wartime identity card
- Photo of Miep and Jan Gies, Bep Voskuijl, Victor Kugler taken in 1970s
Further reading
- The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition, Anne Frank, edited by David Barnouw and Gerrold Van der Stroom, translated by Arnold J. Pomerans, compiled by H. J. J. Hardy, second edition, Doubleday 2003.
- Anne Frank Remembered, Miep Gies with Alison Leslie Gold, Simon and Schuster 1988.
- Roses from the Earth: the Biography of Anne Frank, Carol Ann Lee, Penguin 1999.
- Anne Frank: the Biography, Melissa Muller, afterword by Miep Gies, Bloomsbury 1999.
- The Footsteps of Anne Frank, Ernst Schnabel, Pan 1988.
- The Hidden Life of Otto Frank, Carol Ann Lee, Penguin 2002.