Miep Gies- The Heroine Behind the Diary of Anne Frank

Most people are familiar with Anne Frank, the young teenage Jewish girl who spent two years hiding with her family in a secret annex behind an office building during World War II. If it had not been for the diary she kept during that time, she would probably be just another unknown victim of the Holocaust. But we have her story, and the reason we have it is because of a heroic Christian woman who simply did the right thing- Miep Gies. (pronounced Meep Geese)

Miep was born in Austria in 1909. Due to extreme food shortages during World War I, Miep’s parents were unable to provide enough food for their children, and Miep became so undernourished that soon she was deathly ill. So Miep was accepted into a Dutch relief program for malnourished children and went to live with a family in Holland. She was eleven years old. After five years of living with her adopted family, she decided to stay with them, a decision which her parents fully understood and accepted. When she was 24 years old, she got a job at the Opekta Company, where they sold an ingredient for home-made jam.

The owner of the Opekta Company was Otto Frank, a Jew. He and his wife, Edith, along with their two daughters, Margot and Anne, had moved to Holland from Germany after the Nazis came to power and began instituting anti-Jewish policies. As Holland had remained neutral during World War I, the Franks hoped that there they would be able to live peacefully, without fear of persecution. Miep worked in the front office, and as she and the Franks were both German-speaking immigrants, they became close friends. Miep often visited the Franks at their home, along with her fiancé, Jan Gies.

Then, in 1940, the Germans invaded Holland, and they began introducing the same kinds of restrictions and anti-Jewish policies as they had in Germany. The Franks realized that they needed to act. Along with the Van Pels family, they developed a plan for relocating to a hidden annex behind Otto’s business office. They asked four of their employees to assist them by providing them with rations and supplies. When Otto Frank asked Miep for help, she did not need to think before agreeing to help her friends, even though it meant risking her life. By this time, she and Jan were married, and he was a member of the Dutch resistance. He could obtain illegal ration cards, which Miep would then use to buy food for those living in the annex. Miep and the other employees also continued to run the business for Mr. Frank.

(Miep and Jan)

The Franks and Van Pels families went into hiding in June of 1942. They were later joined by Dr. Pfeffer, a friend of the Frank’s who was also Miep’s dentist, bringing the total number of residents to eight. Along with food and supplies, Miep and the other helpers brought them news of the war, which sometimes meant telling them that some Jewish friends or acquaintances had been evicted from their homes. As terrible as the news sometimes was, it was still a comfort for the refugees to have this contact with the outside world, and to know that they had friends on whom they could rely.

Pfeffer had to rely on Miep for much more than news of the world. While he had come to join the refugees in the attic, his wife had not. She remained living in their home. Every two weeks, Miep would bring him a packet of letters from his wife, sometimes along with a package, and she would take his letters to her. Pfeffer asked her each time for every detail of what his wife said when she and Miep met, and Miep, understanding how precious every piece of information was for this man, gave it gladly.

Mrs. Frank also relied on Miep for emotional support. Edith was constantly afraid of being discovered, arrested, and who knew what would follow after that. Miep felt that she could not give her much hope, but she knew that it was a comfort for Mrs. Frank to be able to confide in someone. Miep offered a sympathetic listening ear, even though she could do no more.

It was Miep who provided Anne with blank accounting books which she used as diaries, in order to help pass the time. During the day, while the office building was full of workers, those living in the annex could not talk or walk around for fear of being discovered. Meanwhile, in the office, Miep and the others had to act as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening. In all of their errands on behalf of the refugees, they had to remain as calm as possible, as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening, to avoid raising suspicion and endangering those in hiding.

The refugees in the annex remained there for two years, but they were finally betrayed, most likely by one of the cleaning women who worked in the office building. One morning, Nazi officers arrived at the office building and began searching. Once the office workers realized that the hiding place was compromised, they recognized that they had the option of running away and trying to save themselves, or staying and facing their uncertain fate. Miep stayed. She was able to alert her husband Jan to stay away (he usually came and had lunch with her) and in that way she was able to protect him, and avoid endangering the young Jewish student they were hiding in their own apartment.

Of the other helpers, one ran away after her friends encouraged her, and the two others were arrested. One of the arresting officers was from Vienna, and she had recognized the accent of her birth-place. She saw a chance to save herself, and maybe even her friends, and she told him that she was also Austrian. He did spare her for that reason, but the refugees were not as lucky. Despite the danger, Miep stayed at the office while the arrests were underway because otherwise, everything in the building would have been taken. The law stated that if any Christians were in the house, only the Jewish property would be removed. The Christian property would not be touched. By Miep remaining present, it meant that the business would not be lost. The course of the war had already tipped in favor of the Allies after the D-Day landings, so Miep hoped that it would only be a matter of time before the war ended and the Franks would return.

A few hours after the break in and arrests, Miep found the diaries which Anne had kept during their two years in hiding. She kept them, intending to return them to Anne after the war. But Anne, Margot and their mother were killed two weeks before the concentration camp was liberated. The members of the Van Pels family and Dr. Pfeffer were also killed. Otto Frank was the only survivor from the annex. When he returned to Holland after the war, he went to live with Miep and Jan, and Miep gave him Anne’s diaries.

Miep has received multiple awards for her courage, and she devoted the rest of her life to spreading and preserving Anne’s story by lecture tours, publishing her own memoirs, and helping to convert the secret annex into a museum which is now the Anne Frank House. She passed away in 2010.  

Miep always insisted that she was not a hero, as so many people did the same for others thing during the war. She was merely a regular person doing what had to be done. She never hesitated or questioned herself. She did what was right. Had it not been for Anne’s now famous diary, no one would have known of Miep, the valiant woman who risked her life for her friends.

PS- I couldn't get the pictures to cooperate, so sorry that they aren't more evenly distributed. 

Bibliography:

“Dear Kitty” Remembering Anne Frank, Documentary

http://www.biography.com/people/miep-gies-21349765

http://www.auschwitz.dk/miepgies.htm