Guardian Of Anne Frank Celebrates 100th Birthday

From The Telegraph:

...Miep Gies was in her early thirties and working as a secretary for the well-to-do Otto Frank at his import export office along Amsterdam's Princengracht when he asked her for help. She was the first to be told about his decision to move his family from their comfortable apartment in the well-to-do south of the city into a small hiding place known as the Achterhuis (home behind) adjacent to his office.

Many old Amsterdam canal houses have a small Achterhuis and Anne's father was counting on the Germans, who had occupied the city and were relentlessly rounding up Jews, not being aware of the secret buildings.

Mrs Gies immediately agreed to be the family's go-between with a group of others. She is now the only surviving member of the team which kept the Franks alive for two years from 1942 until their capture in 1944.

She gathered food and clothing coupons, delivering supplies to the family in their hiding place and risking her own life.

"Anne was a lovely, lively, normal young girl. She was so full of the joy of just being alive. She looked forward to resuming her own life, going back to school, travelling abroad and becoming a writer after the war. She never doubted she and her family would survive."

Miep Gies risked her life looking after the Franks but said: "I stand at the end of a long line of brave Dutch people who did much more than I did to save lives during the dark terrible years of the occupation of the Netherlands by the Germans. For them, the events of those terrible years remain alive like something that happened yesterday. For me, I think of what happened to the Franks every day."

Scholastic Magazine has a section that covers Anne Frank and Miep Gies, as well as other features, including a transcript of an interview she did on line with students, explaining--among other things--how she avoided getting into trouble for helping the Frank family.

Technorati Tag: Holocaust and Anne Frank and Miep Gies.