In many ways, Miep Gies identified with Anne Frank and her family because she, too, was a refugee. Born Hermine Santrouschitz in Austria, she was sent to Leiden in the Netherlands to live with the Gies family at age 13 because of food shortages in her home country after World War I. So when she was faced with the decision to either cast out the Frank family or shelter them from the Nazis, she did the bravest thing imaginable: she hid them for 25 long months, smuggling them food, toiletries, and giving young Anne Frank her famous diaries, and who later rescued those diaries from the fire after the Nazis took the family. This heroine passed away at age 100.
As Mrs. Gies said in her memoir, Anne Frank Remembered, “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 years ago, but always like yesterday in the heart of those of us who bear witness.” With all due respect, I think differently. So does the rest of the world.
Tags: Anne Frank, Miep Gies, Anne Frank Remembered, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, Hermine Santrouschitz, obituaries, bravery, woman who saved Anne Frank’s diary, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
