In Memoriam: Miep Gies, 1909-2010
Jan. 12th, 2010 06:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thatcrazycajunJust weeks shy of what would have been her 101st birthday (!!), the woman who not only helped hide Jews from the Nazis but also brought the world's most famous diary to light afterward, has died. Miep Gies, who with her boss and fellow staff members concealed Anne Frank and her family inside their office building for over two years, passed away yesterday in her native Holland after a brief illness. She was the last of the Franks' surviving protectors, and had spent much of her life after that harrowing period traveling the world and using her fame to speak out against intolerance. BBC News reports the obituary here.
If you've read Anne's diary, as I did when I was a schoolboy, and were as moved and thrilled by it as I was, or seen the play and films based on it, you have this woman to thank. She found Anne's diary and papers where the Gestapo's agents had left them after finally discovering and raiding the hideout, and after the end of World War II helped Anne's dad Otto see to it that they were published. Anne's tales of her journey toward young womanhood while in hiding—a journey that ended at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with her death at age 16—and the conflicts between her family and the other Jews living with them in the "Secret Annexe" (now a museum in Amsterdam) have sold millions upon millions of copies and won multiple awards in the decades since.
Miss Gies, with a becoming humility typical of the Dutch who aided Jews in escaping the slaughter and became known as "The Righteous Among the Nations," denied being any sort of hero: "I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did or more— much more—during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the hearts of those of us who bear witness." Many others, Your Humble Correspondent most definitely included, would respectfully beg to differ. Het afscheid en dankt u, Miss Gies ("farewell and thank you" in Dutch).
If you've read Anne's diary, as I did when I was a schoolboy, and were as moved and thrilled by it as I was, or seen the play and films based on it, you have this woman to thank. She found Anne's diary and papers where the Gestapo's agents had left them after finally discovering and raiding the hideout, and after the end of World War II helped Anne's dad Otto see to it that they were published. Anne's tales of her journey toward young womanhood while in hiding—a journey that ended at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with her death at age 16—and the conflicts between her family and the other Jews living with them in the "Secret Annexe" (now a museum in Amsterdam) have sold millions upon millions of copies and won multiple awards in the decades since.
Miss Gies, with a becoming humility typical of the Dutch who aided Jews in escaping the slaughter and became known as "The Righteous Among the Nations," denied being any sort of hero: "I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did or more— much more—during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the hearts of those of us who bear witness." Many others, Your Humble Correspondent most definitely included, would respectfully beg to differ. Het afscheid en dankt u, Miss Gies ("farewell and thank you" in Dutch).
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-13 12:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-13 04:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-13 01:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-13 04:20 am (UTC)The families who took in Jews were often paid, and some refused to give them up afterwards (they were saving them from Judaism as well as from the Nazis). Jews were turned in for 20 (I think) guilders by their neighbors.
I love the country, but I would never give the majority of people false credit for the courage of the minority.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-13 04:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-13 04:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-13 04:50 am (UTC)http://jew-ish.com/index.php?/stories/item/a_lost_generation/
(The government also wasn't that kind towards the Jews in the years immediately after the Holocaust, either.)