Miep Gies, who helped hide Anne Frank, dies at 100 – Breaking News …
Gies (whose full name is pronounced ‘Meep Khees’) was the last of the “helpers,” the six non-Jews who smuggled food, books, writing paper and news of the outside world to the secret attic apartment of the canal-side warehouse where Anne, her parents, sister and four other Jews hid during World War II.
Condolence messages poured in to an online registry at the rate of about 100 per hour Tuesday, said museum spokeswoman Annemarie Bekker. neither Queen Beatrix, who knighted Gies in 1995, nor the Dutch government immediately issued a statement, however.
Israeli President Shimon Peres, in a letter to the Dutch queen, said Gies “won the hearts of all of us” through her efforts to save the Frank family and rescue the diary. “Miep’s selfless humanitarian deed inspires us to continue believing in the goodness and integrity of human beings in the face of unfathomable evil,” Peres wrote.
The diary chronicles Anne Frank’s life as a budding teenager, from her 13th birthday on June 12, 1942 a few weeks before she went into hiding, until August 1, 1944, just days before police broke through the apartment door concealed behind a moveable bookcase.
Frank died of typhus at age 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945 – two weeks before the camp was liberated.
Gies said she never read the diary until she gave the pages to Otto Frank, saying even a teenager’s privacy was sacred. Later, she said if she had read them during the war she would have had to burn them because they incriminated the “helpers.”
Otto Frank published it in 1947. “The Diary of Anne Frank” was the first popular book about the Holocaust and has been read by millions of children and adults around the world in 70 languages.
The diary was the basis for two other popular art works: a 1959 movie that won three Oscars, and a Pulitzer Prize winning play. both were titled “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
“Every day for over two years she put herself in danger by hiding Jews from the Nazis,” said Anne Frank’s cousin, Bernd “Buddy” Elias, who last saw Gies on her 100th birthday. “If they had caught her, she would have been put in a concentration camp herself.”
Gies brushed aside the accolades for helping hide the Frank family as more than she deserved. “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 in February.
Miep Gies, who helped hide Anne Frank, dies at 100 – Breaking News …
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