Miep Gies
Miep Gies | |
|---|---|
| Born | Hermine Santrouschitz 15 February 1909 |
| Occupation | Humanitarian |
| Spouse(s) | Jan Gies, (1905 – 1993) (m. 1941 - 1993) |
| Children | Paul Gies (1950) |
Miep Gies, née Hermine Santrouschitz (born 15 February 1909), 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.
Biography
Born Hermine Santrouschitz in Vienna, Austria, was transported to Leiden in the Netherlands from Vienna in December 1920 to escape the food shortages prevailing in Austria after World War I. In 1922 she moved with her foster family to Amsterdam. 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 16 July 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 she and her husband 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 4 August 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 4 August 1944, an anonymous informant told 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 avoided arrest because the officer, who came to question her, was Austrian and because Miep was also originally from Austria and felt a connection to her. Later, Miep unsuccessfully tried to bribe the Austrian Nazi officer with money in exchange for releasing her friends.
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.
Once the book was published and widely translated, Miep and Jan Gies became celebrities in the Netherlands, and their courage was recognized 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.
During the making of the documentary film Anne Frank Remembered, which was based on Miep Gies autobiography of the same name, Peter Pepper, the son of Fritz Pfeffer, was able to meet Miep Gies for the first time. After his parents divorced, Pepper was raised by his father, until his father felt it was too dangerous for him to remain in Germany, and in 1938 sent him to London to live with his uncle. By the end of the war he had lost most of his close family, including his father, and his mother, who had died in Theriesienstadt. Pepper made the decision to move to the United States. He settled in California, and founded a very successful office supply business. In December, 1994, during the production of Anne Frank Remembered, Pepper, upon meeting Miep Gies, expressed his thanks to her for attempting to save his father's life. Pepper died of cancer just two months later.
Her only child, Paul Gies, was born on 13 July 1950.
She has continued her humanitarian work since then. Her husband Jan Gies died in 1993 from diabetes.
Miep Gies 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 in the late 1990s.
Miep Gies currently lives in the Dutch province of Noord-Holland. According to Carol Ann Lee's biography of Otto Frank, 'The Hidden Life of Otto Frank', Mrs Gies no longer grants interviews after enduring a bout of severe ill health.
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.
- Anne Frank: the Biography, Melissa Muller, afterword by Miep Gies, Bloomsbury 1999.
- The Hidden Life of Otto Frank, Carol Ann Lee, Penguin, 2002.
External links
- Miep Gies at IMDb
- 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 Jai Gies, Bip Voskuijl, Victor Kuiler taken in 1970s
- Holocaust Rescuers Bibliography with information and links to books about Miep Gies and other Dutch rescuers.