Wednesday, January 13, 2010

In Memoriam - Miep Gies: 2 February 1909 - 11 January 2010

This week, a courageous woman passed away; a woman who never considered herself a hero.   Her name is Miep Gies.   She was one of seven brave Dutch non-Jews who risked their lives in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, to save Anne Frank, her family, and several other Dutch Jews.



This video is from a documentary called "Remembering Anne Frank", and consists of interviews with Miep Gies, and vintage film and photographs of Miep, the Frank family, and the Franks' friends who went into hiding with them.

Miep was born in Vienna, Austria, to a Catholic family, on February 15, 1909.   Her birth name was Hermine Santrouschitz.   At the age of eleven, the young Hermine, who was among many Austrian children suffering from food shortages as a result of the First World War,  was sent to Leiden, the Netherlands, and cared for by a Dutch family.   This family eventually adopted her, and she was given the nickname, Miep, which means "mouse" in Dutch.  At the age of 13, Miep and her adoptive family moved to Amsterdam.

In 1933, she began working as a secretary for a German Jewish refugee, Otto Frank, who had opened a Dutch subsidiary of the German company Opekta, which sold ingredients for making jam.  Mr. Frank, his wife Edith, and their daughters Margot and Anneliese, had fled Nazi Germany due to the increased persecution of the Jewish people, and they settled in Amsterdam.   Miep became a trusted employee, and friend, of the Franks, and also shared in their concerns over the Nazi persecution of Jews.

In May of 1940, the Netherlands, along with Belgium, Luxembourg and France, were invaded and occupied by the Nazis.   In 1941, Miep was approached by a female Dutch Nazi, who was a member of the women's equivalent of the Hitler Youth.   When Miep refused to join, the woman demanded why, since Miep had been born and raised in Austria.   Miep, in effect, told her to 'stick it'--which was a pretty dangerous thing to do under the circumstances.   To avoid being deported for her defiance, Miep married a Dutch social worker named Jan Gies, who had joined the fledgling Dutch resistance.

The Nazis did not begin their wholesale roundup of Dutch Jews until the summer of 1942, after they crushed a nationwide General Strike, in protest of their persecution of the Jewish population.   In July of that year, the teen-age Margot Frank received a summons to report for forced labor in Germany.   By this time, Otto Frank had turned over control of his company to non-Jewish colleagues Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman (in order to keep his company from falling into Nazi hands).  Otto then turned to Miep, and asked her assistance in hiding his family, along with their friends Hermann and Auguste van Pels, their son Peter, and Miep's dentist, Fritz Pfeffer, in a secret upstairs room above the company's office on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam.   Miep, Jan, Kugler, Kleiman, and another secretary, Bep Voskuijl, readily agreed.

Miep played a very important role in caring for the Franks and their friends.   She brought them food (being careful not to go to the same food shops in a row, for fear of arousing suspicion), books and news from the outside world--and important emotional support.   Once, both Miep and Jan spent the night in the Annexe with their friends, and experienced first-hand the terror the hidden ones faced every day.   The Franks followed the course of the war during their two years in hiding, and traced the Allies' advance into Europe on a wall map after the D-Day invasion of June 1944.   They were hopeful the Allies would liberate the Netherlands in due course, and save their lives.

Back home in the Gies' apartment, just a short bicycle ride away from the Annexe, Miep and Jan were also hiding an anti-Nazi university student.   The Gies' and their colleagues would have been shot, had they been discovered to be hiding Jews and anti-Nazis.

On August 4, 1944, the Franks and their friends were betrayed by a still-yet-unknown informant.   They were arrested, along with Mr. Kugler and Mr. Kleiman (the latter were subsequently released later).  Miep went to the Nazi headquarters, and tried to bribe the Austrian Nazi who arrested the Franks, in order to release them.  But she was too late.   Before the Nazis came to empty the Annexe, Miep was able to retrieve Anne's diary and other writings, and locked them in her office desk for safekeeping, when Anne came home.  Miep refused to read anything that Anne had written, saying later that even a child deserves some privacy.   Plus, Anne had mentioned the names of all their 'helpers', and that would have placed their lives in mortal danger if the Nazis had found the diary.  And Miep was prepared to destroy the diary, if that had come true.

Sadly, that was not to be.   After their arrest, the Franks and their friends were taken to the Westerbork internment camp, in northwest Holland, before being deported to 'the East' in September 1944--in the last deportation of Jews from the Netherlands. They were sent to Auschwitz, where Edith Frank died in January 1945, from hunger and exhaustion.   The van Pels parents also died in Auschwitz, whereas Peter van Pels was taken on a death march to the death camp at Mauthausen in Austria, where he died shortly before the camp's liberation.  Anne and her sister Margot were also taken from Auschwitz, to the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany, where they died of typhus in March 1945--only weeks before British forces liberated the camp.

In the end, only Otto survived of those who hid in the Annexe.   When he finally came back to Amsterdam, Miep gave him his daughter's diary.   They waited for any news of Anne's return, but finally received confirmation that she was gone.   When Otto read what Anne had written, he decided to have excerpts from the diary to be published.   And the rest, of course, is history: Anne's diary became one of the most widely-read books to have come out of the Shoah.

After the war, Miep and Jan became parents in 1950, when their only child, Paul, was born.   Otto Frank lived for awhile with the Gies family, until he met and married his second wife and moved to Switzerland--where his mother, and several other Frank family members who had escaped the Nazis now lived.   He spent the rest of his life telling Anne's story.   Jan Gies passed away in 1993, from diabetes.

In later years, Miep received many awards for her heroism.   She received the Order of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany in 1994, and in  1994 was given the title of "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Heroes' and Martyrs' Remembrance Authority.   She was also knighted by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands in 1997.   Miep didn't like being called a hero.   She stated in her autobiography, and on her own Web site, that:

“I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did and 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. Never a day goes by that I do not think of what happened then”.

 Miep spent much of the rest of her life helping Otto Frank answer the many letters that came from readers of Anne's diary, and spoke publicly against Holocaust-deniers and those who falsely claimed Anne's diary was a 'forgery'.  She lived in the Dutch province of Noord-Holland, and died on January 11, 2010, as the result of a fall she suffered around Christmas.   She was 100 years old.

Some personal thoughts:

I must say I disagree with Miep's refusal to be called 'a hero'.   She most certainly was.   And so were all those "Righteous Among the Nations", both known and unknown, who took the same risks as Miep, Jan, and all the other 'helpers' in the Annexe, to save Jewish lives.  And it brings to mind the following verses from the Gospel of Matthew, in Chapter 25:

"When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:  Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?  Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Matthew 25: 31-40 

As a Christian, I firmly believe that Yeshua (Jesus' Hebrew name), when He was here on earth, looked down through the centuries and saw the terrible persecution that would come upon His Jewish brethren, according to the flesh (and YES--He IS Jewish!).   And while these verses might also be used in a wider context -- to describe those who are in genuine need throughout the world -- I believe that, in the narrowest sense, Yeshua is speaking about, and to, those "Righteous Among the Nations" like Miep, who knew the danger, and yet saved Jewish lives.  And I believe that God welcomed Miep Gies into His Kingdom with open arms.
 
May the God of Israel bless you and keep you, Miep -- and may He comfort your son Paul and his family, and all those who admire your life.   May your soul be held in the bonds of Eternal Life.  AMEN.
 
If the time ever came, that a similar terrible persecution of the Jewish people were to happen again, I would like to think (and hope) that I would have the courage to act the way Miep did.

2 comments:

  1. What a marvelous post! You've captured the sweep and the poignancy of this story, and provided so much information--thank you! Everyone in the world needs to learn the deeds of Miep and all like her who risked their lives to save others, and who stood as bright beacons of love and self-sacrifice ever after. May we all live half as nobly as did Miep, Jan, and others like them!

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  2. I ran across your blog following history interest on the profiles. I found all the posts interesting and well written. I see you've branchd off occasionaly to other subjects which is just fine. I started myself with a nature blog and then added a second more eclectic on with book and movie reviews, bad jokes and other miscellaneous. Good luck with you new blog. It can be a lot of fun! :)

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