Miep Gies Died Yesterday: She Was 100 and You Need to Know About Her

Miep Gies told Anne Frank’s story to the world as a warning of the dangers of anti-Semitism, racism and discrimination, and as an assertion of the values of freedom, equal rights and democracy. She did it without fanfare, or peace prizes or the recognition she repeatedly turned away from.

Miep Gies, was an office secretary who defied the Nazi occupiers to hide Anne Frank and her family for two years and saved the teenager's diary for posterity.  Gies was the last of the few non-Jews who supplied food, books and good cheer to the secret annex behind the canal warehouse where Anne, her parents, sister and four other Jews hid for 25 months during World War II.  After the apartment was raided by the German police, Gies gathered up Anne's scattered notebooks and papers and locked them in a drawer for her return after the war. The diary chronicled Anne Frank's life in hiding from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944.

Gies refused to read the diary and writings, saying even a teenager's privacy was sacred. Later, she said if she had read them she would have had to burn them because they incriminated the "helpers," which included her husband, Jan.
Anne Frank died of typhus at age 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, just two weeks before the camp was liberated. Gies gave the diary to Anne's father Otto, the only survivor, who then  published it in 1947.

After the diary was published, Gies tirelessly promoted causes of tolerance. She brushed aside the accolades for helping hide the Frank family as more than she deserved — as if, she said, she had tried to save all the Jews of occupied Holland.

"This is very unfair. So many others have done the same or even far more dangerous work," she wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press days before her 100th birthday last February.

For her courage, Gies was bestowed with the "Righteous Gentile" title by the Israeli Holocaust museum Yad Vashem. She has also been honored by the German Government, Dutch monarchy and educational institutions.

Nevertheless, Gies resisted being made a character study of heroism for the young. "I don't want to be considered a hero," she said in a 1997 online chat with schoolchildren.

"Imagine if young young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary."

Please sit for a moment and think about the life of Miep Gies ... and be grateful for her short 100 years here with us.  May she rest  in peace....

Miep Gies and her husband, Jan, in 1987 at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.  They are standing in front of the bookcase that led to the secret annex where the Frank Family were hidden for more than two years.