This ‘ordinary’ woman hid Anne Frank—and kept her story alive (2024)

Miep Gies was a recently married young office worker living in Amsterdam in 1942. As German occupiers tightened their grip on the city, Gies’s boss, Otto Frank, asked her to hide him and his family from the Nazis, who were sending Jews to concentration camps. For the next two years, Gies risked her life daily to smuggle food to the Franks and four others concealed in secret rooms above Otto’s business.

When she could no longer protect the family—when the Nazis finally came and took them away in 1944—Gies kept their story alive by saving Anne Frank’s journals. She’s the reason the world has The Diary of a Young Girl.

(A cold case team is searching for who betrayed Anne Frank)

This ‘ordinary’ woman hid Anne Frank—and kept her story alive (1)

Later in Gies’s life, people called her heroic. Believing she simply did what she could in evil times, she is said to have made this response: “Even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room.”

Miep’s extraordinary kindness was part of a circle of selfless deeds. She had already known the ravages of a world war. Twenty-two years before the Franks went into hiding, Miep’s desperate parents had sent her, at age 11, starving and ill, from their home in Vienna to a foster family in Leiden, Netherlands. There, she recovered, flourished, and eventually met the people she would then help.

A Small Light tells Gies’s story in an eight-part miniseries shot in Amsterdam and Prague. In interviews on location, its creators and actors reflected on why Gies remains an inspiration.

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“While most of us are familiar with the diary, what was going on outside the annex ... is the mystery,” says Tony Phelan, who with wife Joan Rater helmed the project. Rater adds to that idea: “What does hiding people mean on a day-to-day basis? Miep said yes to Otto Frank, and then you have to say yes every day afterwards, even when it’s hard, even when you’re sick, even when you don’t want to ... And that, to me, the everyday drudgery of it all, is quite dramatic.”

Phelan and Rater, married for 30 years, created, executive produced, and wrote the miniseries after six years of research. It was a 1995 documentary, Anne Frank Remembered, that initially sparked their interest, and they visited the Anne Frank House, the museum established where the Franks once hid. After descending its steep, narrow stairs—as Anne had—Rater noticed a girl doing cartwheels outside.

This ‘ordinary’ woman hid Anne Frank—and kept her story alive (2)

For A Small Light, Rater turned that memory of a girl’s carefree spirit into a flashback scene: Anne in 1941, on Miep and Jan Gies’s wedding day. She’s skipping, giddy over the romantic city hall nuptials. Then, Anne was sassy and bridled at constraints; within a year, her life would be nothing but constraints.

One bright spot for Anne was visits from Gies, who ferried supplies by bicycle. Actress Bel Powley plays Gies and, to get into her character’s mindset, retraced those journeys. “Tony and Joan gave me all these cool maps so that I could cycle Miep’s route,” she says.

Powley, who is Jewish, felt the weight of telling this story, especially as the shoot neared its end. Amsterdam’s besieged streets, Otto’s business, and the famous attic were re-created in Amsterdam and Prague.

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Everything on-screen is rendered as accurately as possible. Period-specific costumes are intentionally threadbare, as they would have been during wartime. Although glamour might seem frivolous given the constant threat of death, the women in hiding “wanted to keep up appearances,” hair and makeup designer Davina Lamont says. A dash of lipstick was an attempt at seeming normal, when nothing was.

On a raw day in Prague, 300 extras cheer GIs in a World War II tank rolling down a cobblestone street. The crowd waves orange flags, the Dutch royal color, for this scene depicting Liberation Day in May 1945. It came too late for the Franks: Anne had been arrested a few months earlier and died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen.

This ‘ordinary’ woman hid Anne Frank—and kept her story alive (6)

The girl who wanted to be a famous writer became one, of course. Her diary uniquely revealed the heart of a typical teen and the truth of the Holocaust, because readers who found the extermination of six million people unfathomable could relate to one girl.

(The history of book bans—and their changing targets—in the U.S.)

Still, no one would ever read entries that began “Dear Kitty” had Gies not gathered the scattered papers and the diary with the red-checkered cover and later given them to Otto, the family’s sole survivor. She did this “to be kind and compassionate,” says Liev Schreiber, who portrays Otto.

Schreiber, whose Jewish grandfather emigrated from Ukraine, sees parallels between World War II’s anti-Semitism and today’s. He co-founded a humanitarian group that vets donations for NGOs in Ukraine, and while volunteering in that war-torn land, he met modern heroes risking their lives to help others.

In Schreiber’s words, “The Miep Gieses of the world—the small lights, the extraordinary ordinary people who did something, who pushed back against tyranny, who pushed back against authoritarians, who pushed back against fascists—remembering what they accomplished, I think, gives us some perspective on what we can accomplish.”

The miniseriesA Small Light premieres on National Geographic May 1 and Disney+ the next day. It airs in four two-episode blocks.

Journalist Jacqueline Cutler regularly covers television. She previously wrote about the National Geographic seriesLimitless.

This story appears in the May 2023 issue ofNational Geographic magazine.

This ‘ordinary’ woman hid Anne Frank—and kept her story alive (2024)

FAQs

This ‘ordinary’ woman hid Anne Frank—and kept her story alive? ›

Miep Gies

Miep Gies
Hermine "Miep" Gies (Dutch: [mip ˈxis]; née Santrouschitz; 15 February 1909 – 11 January 2010) was one of the Dutch citizens who hid Anne Frank, her family (Otto Frank, Margot Frank, Edith Frank) and four other Dutch Jews (Fritz Pfeffer, Hermann van Pels, Auguste van Pels, Peter van Pels) from the Nazis in an annex ...
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Miep_Gies
was one of the helpers of the people hiding in the Secret Annex
the Secret Annex
During WWII, Anne Frank's family hid in the Secret Annex for over 2 years, with the Van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer. Meet them here.
https://www.annefrank.org › anne-frank › main-characters
. After the arrest, she kept Anne's writings in a drawer of her desk. In 2010 she died, one hundred years old.

Who was the woman who helped hide Anne Frank? ›

This educational resource for secondary school aged students tells the story of Miep Gies, the woman who supported Anne Frank and her family when they were in hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam. Miep was born over a hundred years ago in 1909, in Vienna.

Who was Anne Frank in the Commonlit answer? ›

Anne Frank was a German-born Jewish girl who hid with her family in an attic in Amsterdam during the Holocaust. She is one of the most famous victims of the Holocaust thanks to the discovery of her diary which her father and Holocaust survivor, Otto Frank, published after the Holocaust.

Who did Anne Frank hide with? ›

During WWII, Anne Frank's family hid in the Secret Annex for over 2 years, with the Van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer.

How did Anne Frank hide for so long? ›

Anne Frank's family went into hiding in an attic apartment behind Otto Frank's business, located at Prinsengracht 263 in Amsterdam, on July 6, 1942. In an effort to avoid detection, the family left a false trail suggesting they'd fled to Switzerland.

Who is the woman in the history of Anne Frank? ›

Anne Frank, in full Annelies Marie Frank, (born June 12, 1929, Frankfurt am Main, Germany—died February/March 1945, Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, near Hannover), Jewish girl whose diary of her family's two years in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands became a classic of war literature.

How did Anne Frank get found? ›

On August 1, 1944, Anne made her last entry in her diary. Three days later, 25 months of seclusion ended with the arrival of the Nazi Gestapo. Anne and the others had been given away by an unknown informer, and they were arrested along with two of the Christians who had helped shelter them.

Who is Mrs Frank to Anne? ›

Edith Frank (née Holländer; 16 January 1900 – 6 January 1945) was the mother of Holocaust diarist Anne Frank and her older sister Margot. After the family were discovered in hiding in Amsterdam during the German occupation, she was transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

Why did Anne and her family go into hiding commonlit answers? ›

Anne Frank was a Jewish*1 girl living in Amsterdam in Holland. On 12th June 1942 her parents gave her a small red and white diary for her 13th birthday. She named her diary 'Kitty'. On July 6th 1942, Anne and her family had to go into hiding*2, for fear that they might be sent to a concentration camp*3 by the Germans.

Who is suspected of betraying Anne Frank? ›

The investigation, featured on CBS's “60 Minutes,” identified a surprising culprit: Arnold van den Bergh, a prominent Jewish notary desperate to save his own family.

What was the death of Anne Frank? ›

Gies saved the diary, along with Anne's surviving notebooks and papers. Though her writings survived, Anne died of typhus fever at the age of 15. For decades, historians listed the date of her death as occurring on March 31, 1945 — a mere two weeks before the Bergen-Belsen camp was liberated by the American forces.

Where was Anne Frank buried? ›

BERLIN: A mass grave discovered near a Nazi concentration camp in Germany may contain remains of the Jewish wartime diarist Anne Frank who died in 1945. The mass grave was found by Dutch researchers near the site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp that was liberated 70 years ago on April 15, 1945.

Who is Anne Frank for kids? ›

Born an ordinary girl from Frankfurt, Germany, Anne Frank is remembered for her extraordinary message of hope amidst terrors of the Holocaust. To escape the antisemitism of Nazi Germany, Anne's family chose to emigrate to The Netherlands in 1933.

Who is Dear Kitty? ›

'Dear Kitty' is the fictional character Anne Frank addressed many of her diary letters to.

Does the original Anne Frank house still exist? ›

The house is inhabited and therefore not open to the public. The Anne Frank House acquired the house in 2017 and lets it to the Dutch Foundation for Literature, which invites a new 'refugee writer' to live there every year.

What happened to Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman? ›

After interrogation at Gestapo headquarters, he and Kugler were transferred to a prison on the Amstelveenseweg for Jews and political prisoners awaiting deportation. Kleiman was imprisoned in the Amersfoort labour camp before he was released by special dispensation of the Red Cross because of his ill health.

Who were the helpers in the Secret Annex? ›

15 As those in hiding were being taken away, the two male helpers, Kugler and Kleiman, were arrested for helping to hide Jews and served some time in a prison camp while the women, Miep and Bep, were left behind.

How many people did Jan Gies save? ›

Jan Augustus Gies (Dutch pronunciation: [jɑŋ ˈɣis]; 18 August 1905 – 26 January 1993) was a member of the Dutch Resistance who, with his wife, Miep, helped hide Anne Frank, her sister Margot, their parents Otto and Edith, the van Pels family, and Fritz Pfeffer from Nazi persecution during the occupation of the ...

Did Willem van Maaren betray the Franks? ›

Willem van Maaren was the traitor.

However, the investigation did not prove his guilt. Van Maaren fought the accusations and rejected a settlement. The Subdistrict Court dismissed the complaint. A new investigation followed after Silberbauer had been tracked down.

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