by Miep Gies, Alison Leslie Gold

Good INCLUDES BOOKPLATE SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR MIEP GIES

A copy that has been read, but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact.

For the millions moved by Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, here is Miep Gies's own astonishing story. For more than two years, Miep and her husband helped hide the Franks from the Nazis. Like thousands of unsung heroes of the Holocaust, they risked their lives every day to bring food, news, and emotional support to its victims. From her remarkable childhood as a World War I refugee to the moment she places a small, red-orange-checkered diary -- Anne's legacy -- into Otto Frank's hands, Miep Gies remembers her days with simple honesty and shattering clarity. Each page rings with courage and heartbreaking beauty.

Hermine "Miep" Gies was one of the Dutch citizens who hid Anne Frank, her family and four other Dutch Jews from the Nazis in an annex above Otto Frank's business premises during World War II.

Hermine "Miep" Gies (Dutch: [mip ˈxis];[a] née Santrouschitz; 15 February 1909[1] – 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 above Otto Frank's business premises during World War II. She was Austrian by birth, but in 1920, at the age of eleven, she was taken in as a foster child by a Dutch family in Leiden to whom she became very attached. Although she was only supposed to stay for six months, this stay was extended to one year because of frail health, after which Gies chose to remain with them, living the rest of her life in the Netherlands.

In 1933, Gies began working for Otto Frank, a Jewish businessman who had moved with his family from Germany to the Netherlands in the hope of sparing his family from Nazi persecution. She became a close, trusted friend of the Frank family and was a great support to them during the twenty-five months they spent in hiding. Together with her colleague Bep Voskuijl, she retrieved Anne Frank's diary after the family was arrested, and kept the papers safe until Otto Frank returned from Auschwitz in June 1945 and learned of his younger daughter's death soon afterwards. Gies had stored Anne Frank's papers in the hopes of returning them to the girl, but gave them to Otto Frank, who compiled them into a diary first published in June 1947.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] In collaboration with Alison Leslie Gold, Gies wrote the book Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family in 1987.[9] She died in 2010 at age 100.
Early life

Born in Vienna, Austria, to Karoline Maria Santrouschitz,[10][11] Gies was sent to Leiden from Vienna in December 1920 to escape the food shortages prevailing in Austria after World War I. The Nieuwenburgs, a working-class family who already had five children of their own, took her as their foster daughter, and called her by the diminutive "Miep" by which she became known. In 1922, she moved with her foster family to Gaaspstraat 25[9][12] in Amsterdam. Gies was an honors student, and described herself as "reserved and very independent"; after graduating high school, she worked as an accountant and then in 1933 as a secretary with the Dutch branch of the German spice firm Opekta. Gies wrote, "But the office was not the only thing in my life. My social life at this time was very lively. I loved to dance and belonged like many young Dutch girls, to a dance club."[13]

Otto Frank had just relocated from Germany and had been appointed managing director of Opekta's recently expanded Dutch operations. Gies, Frank's employee, became a close friend of the family, as did her fiancé, Jan Gies. After refusing to join a Nazi women's association, her passport was invalidated, and she was ordered to be deported back to Austria within 90 days (by then annexed by Germany, which classified her as a German citizen). The couple faced some difficulties, but they were married on 16 July 1941 so that she could obtain Dutch citizenship and thus evade deportation. "Anne was impressed with my gold ring. She looked at it dreamily. (...) Because times were hard, we had only one ring, although the custom was for a couple to have two. Henk [In her book, Miep called Jan by the name of Henk, because Anne Frank had used that pseudonym in her diary] and I had barely scraped together enough money for one gold ring. He had insisted that I should wear it."[14] Gies's fluency in Dutch and German helped the Frank family assimilate into Dutch society, and she and her husband became regular guests at the Franks' home.
Hiding the families

With her husband Jan and other Opekta employees (Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman and Bep Voskuijl), Miep Gies helped hide Otto and Edith Frank; their daughters Margot and Anne; Hermann, Auguste and Peter van Pels; and Fritz Pfeffer in several upstairs rooms in the company's office building on Amsterdam's Prinsengracht from 6 July 1942 to 4 August 1944.[15] In an interview, Gies said she was glad to help the families hide because she was extremely concerned after seeing what was happening to the Jews in Amsterdam. Every day, she saw trucks loaded with Jews heading to the railway station, en route to Nazi concentration camps. She did not tell anyone, not even her own foster parents, about the people in hiding whom she was assisting.

When purchasing food for the people in hiding, Gies avoided suspicion in many ways: for example, by visiting several different suppliers in a day. She never carried more than what one shopping bag could hold or what she could hide under her coat. To prevent the Opekta workers from becoming suspicious, Gies tried not to enter the hiding place during office hours. Her husband also helped by providing ration cards that he had obtained illegally. By visiting various grocery shops and markets on a regular basis, Gies developed a good sense of the supply situation.

At their apartment, close to the Merwedeplein where the Franks had lived before going into hiding, Gies and her husband Jan (who belonged to the Dutch resistance) also hid an anti-Nazi university student.[16]
The capture

On the morning of 4 August 1944, sitting at her desk, Gies, along with Voskuijl and Kleiman, was confronted by a man with a gun commanding "Stay put! Don't move! Not a sound!" The families had been betrayed and the Grüne Polizei arrested the people hidden at 263 Prinsengracht, as well as Kugler and Kleiman. The next day, Gies went to the German police office to try to find the arrestees. She offered money to buy their freedom but did not succeed. Gies and the other helpers could have been executed if they had been caught hiding Jews; however, she was not arrested because the police officer who came to interrogate her was from Vienna, her birth town. She recognized his accent and told him they had the same hometown. He was amazed, then started pacing and cursing at her, finally deciding to let her stay.[17] Gies remained safe with her husband in Amsterdam throughout the rest of the war.

Before the hiding place was emptied by the authorities, Gies and the younger secretary Bep Voskuijl retrieved parts of Anne Frank's diaries and saved them in their desk drawer. Gies was determined to give them back to Anne. After the war had ended and it was confirmed that Anne Frank had perished in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Gies gave the collection of papers and notebooks to the sole survivor from the Secret Annex, Otto Frank.[7] After transcribing sections for his family, Frank was persuaded of the value of Anne’s account of their ordeal and arranged for the book's publication in 1947. Gies did not read the diaries before turning them over to Otto and later remarked that if she had, she would have had to destroy them because the papers contained the names of all five of the helpers as well as of their black-market suppliers. She was persuaded by Otto Frank to read the diary in its second printing.[8] In 1947, Miep and Jan Gies moved to Jekerstraat 65, by the Merwedeplein [nl], along with Otto Frank.[9]

Miep Gies had assured Anne Frank's biographer Melissa Müller repeatedly that she did not think the main suspect, Willem van Maaren, was the culprit in the betrayal.[18]

Gies was interviewed about her memories of hiding the Frank family for the 1995 documentary film Anne Frank Remembered by Jon Blair. Gies was portrayed by Bel Powley in the 2023 miniseries A Small Light.
Honors and awards
Miep and Jan Gies with plaque, 1987

In 1994, Gies was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany as well as the Wallenberg Medal by the University of Michigan. The following year, Gies received the Yad Vashem Righteous Among the Nations medal. In 1997, she was knighted in the Order of Orange-Nassau by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. The minor planet 99949 Miep Gies is named in her honor.[19] She always maintained that while she appreciated the honors, they embarrassed her: "I am not a hero. I am not a special person. I don't want attention. I did what any decent person would have done."

On 30 July 2009, the Austrian Ambassador to the Netherlands, Wolfgang Paul, presented the Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria to Gies at her home.[20]
Death

On 11 January 2010, Gies died, aged 100, in the city of Hoorn after suffering injuries from a fall.[16][21]

Annelies Marie Frank (German: [ˈanə(liːs maˈʁiː) ˈfʁaŋk] ⓘ, Dutch: [ˌɑnəˈlis maːˈri ˈfrɑŋk, ˈɑnə ˈfrɑŋk] ⓘ; 12 June 1929 – c. February or March 1945)[1] was a German-born Jewish girl who kept a diary in which she documented life in hiding under Nazi persecution during the German occupation of the Netherlands. She is a celebrated diarist who described everyday life from her family hiding place in an Amsterdam attic. One of the most-discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust, she gained fame posthumously with the 1947 publication of The Diary of a Young Girl (originally Het Achterhuis in Dutch, lit. 'the back house'; English: The Secret Annex), in which she documents her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944 — it is one of the world's best-known books and has been the basis for several plays and films.

Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1929. In 1934, when she was four-and-a-half, she and her family moved to Amsterdam, Netherlands, after Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party gained control over Germany. She spent most of her life in or around Amsterdam. By May 1940, the Franks were trapped in Amsterdam by the German occupation of the Netherlands. Anne lost her German citizenship in 1941 and became stateless. Despite spending most of her life in the Netherlands and being a de facto Dutch national,[2] she never officially became a Dutch citizen. As persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, they went into hiding in concealed rooms behind a bookcase in the building where Anne's father, Otto Frank, worked. The hiding place is notably referred to as the "secret annex". Until the family's arrest by the Gestapo on 4 August 1944, Frank kept and regularly wrote in a diary she had received as a birthday present in 1942.

Following their arrest, the Franks were transported to concentration camps. On 1 November 1944,[3] Frank and her sister, Margot, were transferred from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died (presumably of typhus) a few months later. They were estimated by the Red Cross to have died in March, with Dutch authorities setting 31 March as the official date. Later research has alternatively suggested that they may have died in February or early March.

Otto, the only survivor of the Frank family, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that Anne's diary had been saved by his female secretaries, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl. He decided to fulfil his daughter's greatest wish to become a writer. He published her diary in 1947.[4] It was translated from its original Dutch version and first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl, and has since been translated into over 70 languages.[5]
Early life
Anne Frank at the 6th Montessori School, 1940
Photographs of Anne Frank, 1939

Frank was born Annelies[6] or Anneliese[7] Marie Frank on 12 June 1929 at the Maingau Red Cross Clinic[8] in Frankfurt, Germany, to Edith (née Holländer) and Otto Heinrich Frank. She had an older sister, Margot.[9] The Franks were liberal Jews, and did not practice all of the customs and traditions of Judaism.[10] They lived in an assimilated community of Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of various religions. Edith and Otto were devoted parents, who were interested in scholarly pursuits and had an extensive library; both parents encouraged the children to read.[11][12] At the time of Anne's birth, the family lived in a house at Marbachweg 307 in Frankfurt-Eckenheim (today Frankfurt-Dornbusch),[a] where they rented two floors. In 1931, the family moved to Ganghoferstraße 24 in a fashionable liberal area of Frankfurt-Ginnheim, called the Dichterviertel ("Poets' Quarter") (now also part of Dornbusch). Both houses still exist.[13]

In 1933, after Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party won the federal election and Hitler was appointed Chancellor of the Reich, Edith Frank and the children went to stay with Edith's mother Rosa in Aachen. Otto Frank remained in Frankfurt, but after receiving an offer to start a company in Amsterdam, he moved there to organize the business and to arrange accommodation for his family.[14] He began working at the Opekta Works, a company that sold the fruit extract pectin. Edith travelled back and forth between Aachen and Amsterdam and found an apartment on the Merwedeplein (Merwede Square) in the Rivierenbuurt neighbourhood of Amsterdam, where many more Jewish-German refugees settled.[15] In November 1933, Edith followed her husband and a month later Margot moved to Amsterdam.[16] Anne stayed with her grandmother until February, when the family reunited in Amsterdam.[17] The Franks were among 300,000 Jews who fled Germany between 1933 and 1939.[18]

After moving to Amsterdam, Anne and Margot Frank were enrolled in school—Margot in public school and Anne in the 6th Montessori School. Anne joined the 6th Montessori School on 9 April 1934; in 1957, it was posthumously renamed "Anne Frank School".[19][20][21] Despite initial problems with the Dutch language, Margot became a star pupil in Amsterdam. Anne soon felt at home at the Montessori school and met children of her own age, like Hanneli Goslar, who would later become one of her best friends.[22]

In 1938, Otto Frank started a second company, Pectacon, which was a wholesaler of herbs, pickling salts, and mixed spices, used in the production of sausages.[23][24] Hermann van Pels was employed by Pectacon as an advisor about spices. A Jewish butcher, he had fled Osnabrück with his family.[24] In 1939, Edith Frank's mother came to live with the Franks, and remained with them until her death in January 1942.[25]

In May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands, and the occupation government began to persecute Jews by the implementation of restrictive and discriminatory laws; mandatory registration and segregation soon followed.[25] Otto Frank tried to arrange for the family to emigrate to the United States—the only destination that seemed to him to be viable[26]—but Frank's application for a visa was never processed,[27] because the U.S. consulate in Rotterdam was destroyed in the German bombing on 14 May 1940, resulting in the loss of all the paperwork there, including the family's visa application.[28][unreliable source?]

After the summer holidays in 1941, Anne learned that she would no longer be allowed to go to the Montessori School, as Jewish children had to attend Jewish schools. From then on Anne, like her sister Margot, went to the Jewish Lyceum [nl] (Joods Lyceum),[29] an exclusive Jewish secondary school in Amsterdam opened in September 1941.[30]

    1929: Anne Frank's birthplace, the Hospital Maingau of the Red Cross, in 1929 still known as Vaterländisches Krankenhaus (the hospital of the "Patriotic Women's Association") in Frankfurt-Nordend
    1929: Anne Frank's birthplace, the Hospital Maingau of the Red Cross, in 1929 still known as Vaterländisches Krankenhaus (the hospital of the "Patriotic Women's Association") in Frankfurt-Nordend
    1929-1931: Stele in front of Anne's home from 1929 to 1931 at Marbachweg 307 in Frankfurt-Dornbusch, where Anne's parents moved from the Westend with Margot in 1927
    1929-1931: Stele in front of Anne's home from 1929 to 1931 at Marbachweg 307 in Frankfurt-Dornbusch, where Anne's parents moved from the Westend with Margot in 1927
    1931-1933: Ganghoferstraße 24 in the Poets' Quarter of Frankfurt-Dornbusch, the Franks' residence from 1931 to 1933
    1931-1933: Ganghoferstraße 24 in the Poets' Quarter of Frankfurt-Dornbusch, the Franks' residence from 1931 to 1933
    1933-1934: Pastorplatz 1 in Aachen, where Anne's maternal grandmother Rosa Holländer (née Stern) lived until 1939. Anne stayed with her from July 1933 to February 1934.
    1933-1934: Pastorplatz 1 in Aachen, where Anne's maternal grandmother Rosa Holländer (née Stern) lived until 1939. Anne stayed with her from July 1933 to February 1934.
    1934-1942: July 22, 1941: the only known occasion Anne was filmed, during the wedding of one of her neighbours. She is seen from 0:09 to 0:13 watching from the Franks' apartment at Merwedeplein 37 in Amsterdam, where they lived from 1934 to 1942

Period chronicled in Anne's diary
Before going into hiding
Anne Frank in December 1941

For her thirteenth birthday on 12 June 1942, Anne received an autograph book,[31] bound with red-and-white checkered cloth[32] and with a small lock on the front. Frank decided she would use it as a diary,[33] and had named it Kitty. She began writing in it almost immediately. In her entry dated 20 June 1942, she lists many of the restrictions placed upon the lives of the Dutch Jewish population.[34]

In mid-1942, the systematic deportation of Jews from the Netherlands started.[35] Otto and Edith Frank planned to go into hiding with the children on 16 July 1942, but when Margot received a call-up notice from the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung (Central Office for Jewish Emigration) on 5 July, ordering her to report for relocation to a work camp, they were forced to move the plan ten days forward.[36] Shortly before going into hiding, Anne gave her friend and next-door neighbor Toosje Kupers a book, a tea set, and a tin of marbles. On 6 July, the Frank family left a note for the Kupers, asking them to take care of their cat Moortje. As the Associated Press reports: "'I'm worried about my marbles, because I'm scared they might fall into the wrong hands,' Kupers said Anne told her. 'Could you keep them for me for a little while?'"[37]
Life in the Achterhuis
A three-shelf timber bookcase, filled with books, stands at an angle in front of a doorway to the Secret Annexe
Reconstruction of the bookcase that covered the entrance to the Secret Annex, in the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam

On the morning of Monday, 6 July 1942,[38] the Frank family moved into their hiding place, a three-story space entered from a landing above the Opekta offices on the Prinsengracht, where some of Otto Frank's most trusted employees would be their helpers. This hiding place became known as the Achterhuis (translated into "Secret Annex" in English editions of the diary). Their apartment was left in a state of disarray to create the impression that they had left suddenly, and Otto left a note that hinted they were going to Switzerland. The need for secrecy forced them to leave behind Anne's cat, Moortje. As Jews were not allowed to use public transport, Otto, Edith and Anne walked several kilometres from their home. Margot cycled to the Prinsengracht with Miep Gies.[39][40] The door to the Achterhuis was later covered by a bookcase to ensure it remained undiscovered.[41]

Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Miep Gies, and Bep Voskuijl were the only employees who knew of the people in hiding. Along with Gies' husband Jan Gies and Voskuijl's father Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl, they were the "helpers" for the duration of their confinement. The only connection between the outside world and the occupants of the house, they kept the occupants informed of war news and political developments. They catered to all of their needs, ensured their safety, and supplied them with food, a task that grew more difficult with the passage of time. Frank wrote of their dedication and of their efforts to boost morale within the household during the most dangerous of times. All were aware that, if caught, they could face the death penalty for sheltering Jews.[42]
A photograph taken from the opposite side of the canal shows two four-story buildings which housed the Opekta offices and behind them, the Secret Annexe
Canal-side façade of the former Opekta building (center-left) on Prinsengracht canal. The Secret Annex (Achterhuis) is at the rear in an enclosed courtyard.
Model of the former Opekta front building (left) and rear building / Secret Annex (right) where Anne Frank stayed

On 13 July 1942, the Franks were joined by the Van Pels family, made up of Hermann, Auguste, and 16-year-old Peter, and then in November by Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist and friend of the family. Frank wrote of her pleasure at having new people to talk to, but tensions quickly developed within the group forced to live in such confined conditions. After sharing her room with Pfeffer, she found him to be insufferable and resented his intrusion,[43] and she clashed with Auguste van Pels, whom she regarded as foolish. She regarded Hermann van Pels and Fritz Pfeffer as selfish, particularly in regard to the amount of food they consumed.[44] Some time later, after first dismissing the shy and awkward Peter van Pels, she recognized a kinship with him and the two entered a romance. She received her first kiss from him, but her infatuation with him began to wane as she questioned whether her feelings for him were genuine, or resulted from their shared confinement.[45] Anne Frank formed a close bond with each of the helpers, and Otto Frank later recalled that she had anticipated their daily visits with impatient enthusiasm. He observed that Anne's closest friendship was with Bep Voskuijl, "the young typist… the two of them often stood whispering in the corner."[46]
The young diarist

In her writing, Frank examined her relationships with the members of her family, and the strong differences in each of their personalities. She was closest emotionally to her father, who later said, "I got on better with Anne than with Margot, who was more attached to her mother. The reason for that may have been that Margot rarely showed her feelings and didn't need as much support because she didn't suffer from mood swings as much as Anne did."[47] The Frank sisters formed a closer relationship than had existed before they went into hiding, although Anne sometimes expressed jealousy towards Margot, particularly when members of the household criticized Anne for lacking Margot's gentle and placid nature. As Anne began to mature, the sisters were able to confide in each other. In her entry of 12 January 1944, Frank wrote, "Margot's much nicer… She's not nearly so catty these days and is becoming a real friend. She no longer thinks of me as a little baby who doesn't count."[48]
Taken from the top of the Westerkerk church, this image shows the Prinsengracht canal and the rooftops of the buildings in the neighborhood
Amsterdam from the Westerkerk w/partial view of the Secret Annex (just up from the dark gray building on near-right corner, just right of block-like square gray roof of 2nd building from corner) with light-tan wall and a single small window

Frank frequently wrote of her difficult relationship with her mother, and of her ambivalence towards her. On 7 November 1942, she described her "contempt" for her mother and her inability to "confront her with her carelessness, her sarcasm and her hard-heartedness," before concluding, "She's not a mother to me."[49] Later, as she revised her diary, Frank felt ashamed of her harsh attitude, writing: "Anne, is it really you who mentioned hate, oh Anne, how could you?"[50] She came to understand that their differences resulted from misunderstandings that were as much her fault as her mother's, and saw that she had added unnecessarily to her mother's suffering. With this realization, Frank began to treat her mother with a degree of tolerance and respect.[51]

The Frank sisters each hoped to return to school as soon as they were able, and continued with their studies while in hiding. Margot took a course 'Elementary Latin' by correspondence in Bep Voskuijl's name and received high marks.[52] Most of Anne's time was spent reading and studying, and she regularly wrote and edited (after March 1944) her diary entries. In addition to providing a narrative of events as they occurred, she wrote about her feelings, beliefs, dreams and ambitions, subjects she felt she could not discuss with anyone. As her confidence in her writing grew, and as she began to mature, she wrote of more abstract subjects such as her belief in God, and how she defined human nature.[53]

Frank aspired to become a journalist, writing in her diary on Wednesday, 5 April 1944:

    I finally realized that I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life, to become a journalist, because that's what I want! I know I can write ..., but it remains to be seen whether I really have talent ...

    And if I don't have the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always write for myself. But I want to achieve more than that. I can't imagine living like Mother, Mrs. van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! ...

    I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that's why I'm so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that's inside me!

    When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that's a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?[54]

She continued writing regularly until her last entry of 1 August 1944.[55]
Arrest
Taken from outside the reconstruction of a barracks, the photo shows a barbed wirefence, and beyond it a grassy area with a small timber hut
A partial reconstruction of the barracks in the Westerbork transit camp where Anne Frank was housed from August to September 1944
Inscription for Annelies "Anne" Frank at the National Holocaust Names Memorial, Amsterdam, 2023.

On the morning of 4 August 1944, the Achterhuis was stormed by a group of German uniformed police (Grüne Polizei) led by SS-Oberscharführer Karl Silberbauer of the Sicherheitsdienst.[56] The Franks, Van Pelses, and Pfeffer were taken to RSHA headquarters, where they were interrogated and held overnight. On 5 August, they were transferred to the Huis van Bewaring (House of Detention), an overcrowded prison on the Weteringschans [nl]. Two days later they were transported to the Westerbork transit camp, through which more than 100,000 Jews, mostly Dutch and German, had passed. Having been arrested in hiding, they were considered criminals and sent to the Punishment Barracks for hard labour.[57]

Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman were arrested and jailed at the penal camp for enemies of the regime at Amersfoort, in the province of Utrecht. Kleiman was released after seven weeks, but Kugler was held in various Dutch concentration and prison camps until the war's end.[58] Miep Gies was questioned and threatened by the Security Police but not detained. Bep Voskuijl managed to escape with a few documents that would have incriminated their black market contacts. During the following days, the two female secretaries returned to the Achterhuis and found Anne's papers strewn on the floor. They collected them, as well as several family photograph albums, and Gies resolved to return them to Anne after the war. On 7 August 1944, Gies attempted to facilitate the release of the prisoners by confronting Silberbauer and offering him money to intervene, but he refused.[59]
Source of discovery

In 2015, Flemish journalist Jeroen De Bruyn and Joop van Wijk, Bep Voskuijl's youngest son, wrote a biography[b] in which they alleged that Bep's younger sister (their aunt) Nelly (1923–2001) could have betrayed the Franks. Nelly was a Nazi collaborator from the age of 19 to 23.[60] She had run away to Austria with a Nazi officer, and returned to Amsterdam in 1943 after the relationship ended.[61] Nelly had been critical of Bep and their father, Johannes Voskuijl, for helping the Jews;[62] Johannes was the one who constructed the bookcase covering the entrance to the hiding place and remained as an unofficial watchman of the hideout.[61] In one of their quarrels, Nelly shouted to them, "Go to your Jews."[63] Karl Josef Silberbauer, the SS officer who made the arrest, was reported to have said that the informer had "the voice of a young woman".[64][65][unreliable source?]

In 2016, the Anne Frank House published new research pointing to an investigation over ration card fraud, rather than betrayal, as a possible explanation for the raid that led to the arrest of the Franks.[66] The report stated that other activities in the building may have led authorities there, including activities of Otto Frank's company; however, it did not rule out betrayal.[67]

A 2018 book suggested Ans van Dijk, a Dutch Jew who betrayed at least 145 fellow Jews to the Gestapo, as a potential candidate for the informant. Dutch resistance fighter Gerard Kremer, who worked as a caretaker at an office building requisitioned by the Sicherheitsdienst, apparently witnessed Van Dijk visiting the building in August 1944 and overheard her talking with her SD superiors about Prinsengracht, where the Franks were hiding. However, another book examining this possibility noted that many of Van Dijk's victims had lived in or near Prinsengracht.[68]

In January 2022, some investigators[who?] proposed Arnold van den Bergh, a member of Amsterdam's Jewish Council who died in 1950, as the suspected informant.[69][70] The investigators postulated that Van den Bergh gave up the Franks to save his family. The investigation is chronicled in Rosemary Sullivan's English-language book, The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation.[71] Evidence was also claimed to have been found that Anne Frank's father later knew this but did not reveal it after the war.[69] According to the BBC, these investigators "spent six years using modern investigative techniques to crack the 'cold case…'."[69] However, according to The New York Times, several World War II and Holocaust scholars have doubted the methods and conclusions of the investigators, calling the evidence "far too thin".[72]

Shortly after the publication of The Betrayal of Anne Frank, after criticism from scholars Bart van der Boom, David Barnouw and Johannes Houwink ten Cate, Dutch publishing house Ambo Anthos, which had published a Dutch translation, apologized via an internal email. The publisher said they should have been more critical and announced that they are "await(ing) the answers from the researchers to the questions that have emerged and are delaying the decision to print another run".[73][74][75] In response, Pieter van Twisk, one of the investigators referenced in the book, said that he was "perplexed by the email" and that the investigators had never claimed to have uncovered the complete truth.[75] In March 2022, a group of World War Two experts and historians published their analysis of the conclusions and of the historical sources used in The Betrayal of Anne Frank; they contested the central claim that the Amsterdam Jewish council even had a list of Jewish hiding places that Van den Bergh could draw on, and concluded that the accusation of Van den Bergh was based on weak assumptions and lack of historical knowledge.[76] As a result, the Dutch language version of the book was recalled by Ambo Anthos.[77][78]

On 19 August 2022, the Dutch researcher Natasha Gerson published an 80-page report analyzing the annotations and sources in The Betrayal of Anne Frank, which argued that the theory in the book was not only flawed but the product of source fraud.[79][80][81] The report concluded that Otto Frank's recorded agenda, as well as a letter Otto received from helper Johannes Kleiman and several other statements, were proven to be distorted to suit the outcome in the book. Several negative claims about Van den Bergh had Anton Schepers, a Nazi collaborator who was diagnosed twice as insane and who had taken over Van den Bergh's notary practice, as the only source. This included the claim of Nazi contacts and a commission of 200,000 guilders paid on the sale of Jacques Goudstikker's art business. While The Betrayal of Anne Frank stated that Van den Bergh enjoyed the protection of two high-up Nazis, the CCT[clarification needed] and Sullivan had omitted statements that the named Nazis had not known Van den Bergh.[82] Plans to publish a German translation of Sullivan's book, previously postponed, were cancelled soon afterwards.[80]
Deportation and life in captivity

On 3 September 1944,[c] the group was deported on what would be the last transport from Westerbork to the Auschwitz concentration camp and arrived after a three-day journey; on the same train was Bloeme Evers-Emden, an Amsterdam native who had befriended Margot and Anne in the Jewish Lyceum [nl] in 1941.[83] Bloeme saw Anne, Margot, and their mother regularly in Auschwitz,[84] and was interviewed for her remembrances of the Frank women in Auschwitz in the television documentary The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank (1988) by Dutch filmmaker Willy Lindwer[85] and the BBC documentary Anne Frank Remembered (1995).[86]

Upon arrival at Auschwitz, the SS forcibly split the men from the women and children, and Otto Frank was separated from his family. Those deemed able to work were admitted into the camp, and those deemed unfit for labour were immediately killed. Of the 1,019 passengers, 549—including all children younger than 15—were sent directly to the gas chambers. Anne Frank, who had turned 15 three months earlier, was one of the youngest people spared from her transport. She was soon made aware that most people were gassed upon arrival and never learned that the entire group from the Achterhuis had survived this selection. She reasoned that her father, in his mid-fifties and not particularly robust, had been killed immediately after they were separated.[87]

With the other women and girls not selected for immediate death, Frank was forced to strip naked to be disinfected, had her head shaved, and was tattooed with an identifying number on her arm. By day, the women were used as slave labour and Frank was forced to haul rocks and dig rolls of sod; by night, they were crammed into overcrowded barracks. Some witnesses later testified Frank became withdrawn and tearful when she saw children being led to the gas chambers; others reported that more often she displayed strength and courage. Her gregarious and confident nature allowed her to obtain extra bread rations for her mother, sister, and herself. Disease was rampant; before long, Frank's skin became badly infected by scabies. The Frank sisters were moved into an infirmary, which was in a state of constant darkness and infested with rats and mice. Edith Frank stopped eating, saving every morsel of food for her daughters and passing her rations to them through a hole she made at the bottom of the infirmary wall.[88]
A Memorial for Margot and Anne Frank shows a Star of David and the full names, birthdates, and year of death of each of the sisters, in white lettering on a large black stone. The stone sits alone in a grassy field, and the ground beneath the stone is covered with floral tributes and photographs of Anne Frank
Memorial for Margot and Anne Frank at the former Bergen-Belsen site

In October 1944, the Frank women were scheduled to join a transport to the Liebau labour camp in Lower Silesia. Bloeme Evers-Emden was scheduled to be on this transport, but Anne was prohibited from going because she had developed scabies, and her mother and sister opted to stay with her. Bloeme went on without them.[86]

On 28 October, selections began for women to be relocated to Bergen-Belsen. More than 8,000 women, including Anne and Margot Frank, and Auguste van Pels, were transported. Edith Frank was left behind and died of disease, starvation, and exhaustion.[89][90] Tents were erected at Bergen-Belsen to accommodate the influx of prisoners, and as the population rose, the death toll due to disease increased rapidly.

Anne Frank was briefly reunited with two friends, Hanneli Goslar and Nanette Blitz, who were also confined in the camp. Blitz had been moved from the Sternlager to the same section of the camp as Frank on 5 December 1944,[91] while Goslar had been held in the Sternlager since February 1944.[92] Both women survived the war, and later discussed the conversations they had with Frank, Blitz in person[93] and Goslar through a barbed wire fence.[94] Blitz described Anne as bald, emaciated, and shivering,[93] remarking: "[The] shock of seeing her in this emaciated state was indescribable." Anne told her that she hoped to write a book based on the diary when the war ended.[95] Goslar noted Auguste van Pels was with Anne and Margot Frank, and was caring for Margot, who was severely ill.[96] She also recalled she did not see Margot, as she was too weak to leave her bunk,[97] while Blitz stated she met with both of the Frank sisters.[98] Anne told Blitz and Goslar she believed her parents were dead, and for that reason she did not wish to live any longer.[98][97] Goslar later estimated their meetings had taken place in late January or early February 1945.[96]
Death

Anne Frank died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in February or March 1945. The specific cause is unknown; however, there is evidence to suggest that she died from a typhus epidemic that spread through the camp, killing 17,000 prisoners.[99] Gena Turgel, a survivor of Bergen-Belsen, knew Anne at the camp. In 2015, she told the British newspaper The Sun: "Her bed was around the corner from me. She was delirious, terrible, burning up." She said she had brought Frank water to wash.[100] Turgel, who worked in the camp hospital, said that the epidemic took a terrible toll on the inmates: "The people were dying like flies—in the hundreds. Reports used to come in—500 people who died. Three hundred? We said, 'Thank God, only 300.'"[100] Other diseases, including typhoid fever, were rampant.[101]

Witnesses later testified Margot fell from her bunk in her weakened state and was killed by the shock. Anne died a day after Margot.[102][103] The dates of Margot's and Anne's deaths were not recorded. It was long thought that their deaths occurred only a few weeks before British troops liberated the camp on 15 April 1945,[104] but research in 2015 indicated that they may have died as early as February.[105] Among other evidence, witnesses recalled that the Franks displayed typhus symptoms by 7 February,[1][106][107][108] and Dutch health authorities reported that most untreated typhus victims died within 12 days of their first symptoms.[105] Additionally, Hanneli Goslar stated her father, Hans Goslar [de], died one or two weeks after their first meeting;[109][better source needed] Hans died on 25 February 1945.[110] After the war, it was estimated that only 5,000 of the 107,000 Jews deported from the Netherlands between 1942 and 1944 survived. An estimated 30,000 Jews remained in the Netherlands, with many people aided by the Dutch underground. Approximately two thirds of this group survived the war.[111]

Otto Frank survived his internment in Auschwitz. After the war ended, he returned to Amsterdam in June 1945 where he was sheltered by Jan and Miep Gies as he attempted to locate his family. He learned of the death of his wife, Edith, during his journey to Amsterdam,[112] but remained hopeful that his daughters had survived. After several weeks, he discovered Margot and Anne had also died. He attempted to determine the fates of his daughters' friends and learned many had been murdered. Sanne Ledermann, often mentioned in Anne's diary, had been gassed along with her parents; her sister, Barbara Ledermann, a close friend of Margot's, had survived.[113] Several of the Frank sisters' school friends had survived, as had the extended families of Otto and Edith Frank, as they had fled Germany during the mid-1930s, with individual family members settling in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.[114]
The Diary of a Young Girl
Main article: The Diary of a Young Girl
Publication
Het Achterhuis (literally, "the rear house"), the first Dutch edition of Anne Frank's diary, published in 1947, later translated into English as The Diary of a Young Girl

In July 1945, after the sisters Janny and Lien Brilleslijper, who were with Anne and Margot Frank in Bergen-Belsen,[115] confirmed the deaths of the Frank sisters, Miep Gies gave Otto Frank Anne's notebooks (including the red-and-white checkered diary) and a bundle of loose notes that she and Bep Voskuijl had saved in the hope of returning them to Anne. Otto Frank later commented that he had not realized Anne had kept such an accurate and well-written record of their time in hiding. In his memoir, he described the painful process of reading the diary, recognizing the events described and recalling that he had already heard some of the more amusing episodes read aloud by his daughter. He saw for the first time the more private side of his daughter and those sections of the diary she had not discussed with anyone, noting, "For me it was a revelation… I had no idea of the depth of her thoughts and feelings… She had kept all these feelings to herself".[116] Moved by her repeated wish to be an author, he began to consider having it published.[117]

Frank's diary began as a private expression of her thoughts; she wrote several times that she would never allow anyone to read it. She candidly described her life, her family and companions, and their situation, while beginning to recognize her ambition to write fiction for publication. In March 1944, she heard a radio broadcast by Gerrit Bolkestein—a member of the Dutch government in exile, based in London—who said that when the war ended, he would create a public record of the Dutch people's oppression under German occupation.[118] He mentioned the publication of letters and diaries, and Frank decided to submit her work when the time came. She began editing her writing, removing some sections and rewriting others, with a view to publication. Her original notebook was supplemented by additional notebooks and loose-leaf sheets of paper. She created pseudonyms for the members of the household and the helpers. The Van Pels family became Hermann, Petronella, and Peter van Daan, and Fritz Pfeffer became Albert Düssell. In this edited version, she addressed each entry to "Kitty," a fictional character in Cissy van Marxveldt's Joop ter Heul novels that Anne enjoyed reading. Otto Frank used her original diary, known as "version A", and her edited version, known as "version B", to produce the first version for publication. Although he restored the true identities of his own family, he retained all of the other pseudonyms.[119]

Otto Frank gave the diary to the historian Annie Romein-Verschoor, who tried unsuccessfully to have it published. She then gave it to her husband Jan Romein, who wrote an article about it, titled "Kinderstem" ("A Child's Voice"), which was published in the newspaper Het Parool on 3 April 1946. He wrote that the diary "stammered out in a child's voice, embodies all the hideousness of fascism, more so than all the evidence at Nuremberg put together."[120] His article attracted attention from publishers, and the diary was published in the Netherlands as Het Achterhuis (The Annex) (literally, "the back house") in 1947,[121] followed by five more printings by 1950.[122]

It was first published in Germany and France in 1950, and after being rejected by several publishers, was first published in the United Kingdom in 1952. The first American edition, published in 1952 under the title Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, was positively reviewed. The book was successful in France, Germany, and the United States, but in the United Kingdom it failed to attract an audience and by 1953 was out of print. Its most noteworthy success was in Japan, where it received critical acclaim and sold more than 100,000 copies in its first edition. In Japan, Anne Frank quickly was identified as an important cultural figure who represented the destruction of youth during the war.[123]

A play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett based upon the diary premiered in New York City on 5 October 1955, and later won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was followed by the film The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), which was a critical and commercial success. Biographer Melissa Müller later wrote that the dramatization had "contributed greatly to the romanticizing, sentimentalizing and universalizing of Anne's story."[124] Over the years the popularity of the diary grew, and in many schools, particularly in the United States, it was included as part of the curriculum, introducing Anne Frank to new generations of readers.[125]
Reception

The diary has been praised for its literary merits. Commenting on Anne Frank's writing style, the dramatist Meyer Levin commended Frank for "sustaining the tension of a well-constructed novel",[126] and was so impressed by the quality of her work that he collaborated with Otto Frank on a dramatization of the diary shortly after its publication.[127] Levin became obsessed with Anne Frank, which he wrote about in his autobiography The Obsession. The poet John Berryman called the book a unique depiction, not merely of adolescence but of the "conversion of a child into a person as it is happening in a precise, confident, economical style stunning in its honesty".[128]

In her introduction to the diary's first American edition, Eleanor Roosevelt described it as "one of the wisest and most moving commentaries on war and its impact on human beings that I have ever read."[129] John F. Kennedy discussed Anne Frank in a 1961 speech, and said, "Of all the multitudes who throughout history have spoken for human dignity in times of great suffering and loss, no voice is more compelling than that of Anne Frank."[130][131] In the same year, the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg wrote of her: "one voice speaks for six million—the voice not of a sage or a poet but of an ordinary little girl."[132]

As Anne Frank's stature as both a writer and humanist has grown, she has been discussed specifically as a symbol of the Holocaust and more broadly as a representative of persecution.[133] Hillary Clinton, in her acceptance speech for an Elie Wiesel Humanitarian Award in 1994, read from Anne Frank's diary and spoke of her "awakening us to the folly of indifference and the terrible toll it takes on our young," which Clinton related to contemporary events in Sarajevo, Somalia and Rwanda.[134] After receiving a humanitarian award from the Anne Frank Foundation in 1994, Nelson Mandela addressed a crowd in Johannesburg, saying he had read Anne Frank's diary while in prison and "derived much encouragement from it." He likened her struggle against Nazism to his struggle against apartheid, drawing a parallel between the two philosophies: "Because these beliefs are patently false, and because they were, and will always be, challenged by the likes of Anne Frank, they are bound to fail."[135] Also in 1994, Václav Havel said "Anne Frank's legacy is very much alive and it can address us fully" in relation to the political and social changes occurring at the time in former Eastern Bloc countries.[130]

Primo Levi suggested Anne Frank is frequently identified as a single representative of the millions of people who suffered and died as she did because "One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way; if we were capable of taking in all the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live."[130] In her closing message in Müller's biography of Anne Frank, Miep Gies expressed a similar thought, though she attempted to dispel what she felt was a growing misconception that "Anne symbolizes the six million victims of the Holocaust", writing: "Anne's life and death were her own individual fate, an individual fate that happened six million times over. Anne cannot, and should not, stand for the many individuals whom the Nazis robbed of their lives… But her fate helps us grasp the immense loss the world suffered because of the Holocaust."[136]

Otto Frank spent the remainder of his life as custodian of his daughter's legacy, saying, "It's a strange role. In the normal family relationship, it is the child of the famous parent who has the honour and the burden of continuing the task. In my case the role is reversed." He recalled his publisher's explaining why he thought the diary has been so widely read, with the comment, "he said that the diary encompasses so many areas of life that each reader can find something that moves him personally".[137] Simon Wiesenthal expressed a similar sentiment when he said that the diary had raised more widespread awareness of the Holocaust than had been achieved during the Nuremberg Trials, because "people identified with this child. This was the impact of the Holocaust, this was a family like my family, like your family and so you could understand this."[138]

In June 1999, Time magazine published a special edition titled "Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century". Anne Frank was selected as one of the "Heroes & Icons", and the writer, Roger Rosenblatt, described her legacy with the comment, "The passions the book ignites suggest that everyone owns Anne Frank, that she has risen above the Holocaust, Judaism, girlhood and even goodness and become a totemic figure of the modern world—the moral individual mind beset by the machinery of destruction, insisting on the right to live and question and hope for the future of human beings." He notes that while her courage and pragmatism are admired, her ability to analyse herself and the quality of her writing are the key components of her appeal. He writes, "The reason for her immortality was basically literary. She was an extraordinarily good writer, for any age, and the quality of her work seemed a direct result of a ruthlessly honest disposition."[139]
Denials of authenticity and legal action

After the diary became widely known in the late 1950s, various allegations against the veracity of the diary and/or its contents appeared, with the earliest published criticisms occurring in Sweden and Norway.[140] In 1957, Fria ord ("Free Words"), the magazine of the Swedish neofascist organization National League of Sweden, published an article by Danish author and critic Harald Nielsen, who had previously written antisemitic articles about the Danish-Jewish author Georg Brandes.[141] Among other things, the article claimed that the diary had been written by Meyer Levin.[142]

In 1958, at a performance of The Diary of Anne Frank in Vienna, Simon Wiesenthal was challenged by a group of protesters who asserted that Anne Frank had never existed, and who challenged Wiesenthal to prove her existence by finding the man who had arrested her. Wiesenthal indeed began searching for Karl Silberbauer and found him in 1963. When interviewed, Silberbauer admitted his role, and identified Anne Frank from a photograph as one of the people arrested. Silberbauer provided a full account of events, even recalling emptying a briefcase full of papers onto the floor. His statement corroborated the version of events that had previously been presented by witnesses such as Otto Frank.[143]

In 1959, Otto Frank took legal action in Lübeck against Lothar Stielau, a school teacher and former Hitler Youth member who published a school paper that described the diary as "a forgery". The complaint was extended to include Heinrich Buddegerg, who wrote a letter in support of Stielau, which was published in a Lübeck newspaper. The court examined the diary in 1960 and authenticated the handwriting as matching that in letters known to have been written by Anne Frank. They declared the diary to be genuine. Stielau recanted his earlier statement, and Otto Frank did not pursue the case any further.[142]

In 1976, Otto Frank took action against Heinz Roth of Frankfurt, who published pamphlets stating that the diary was "a forgery". The judge ruled that if Roth were to publish any further statements he would be subjected to a fine of 500,000 German marks and a six-month jail sentence. Roth appealed against the court's decision. He died in 1978, and after a year his appeal was rejected.[142]

Otto Frank mounted a lawsuit in 1976 against Ernst Römer, who distributed a pamphlet titled "The Diary of Anne Frank, Bestseller, A Lie". When a man named Edgar Geiss distributed the same pamphlet in the courtroom, he too was prosecuted. Römer was fined 1,500 Deutschmarks,[142] and Geiss was sentenced to six months' imprisonment. The sentence of Geiss was reduced on appeal, and the case was eventually dropped following a subsequent appeal because the time limit for filing a libel case had expired.[144]

With Otto Frank's death in 1980, the original diary, including letters and loose sheets, was willed to the Dutch Institute for War Documentation,[145] which commissioned a forensic study of the diary through the Netherlands Ministry of Justice in 1986. They examined the handwriting against known examples and found that they matched. They determined that the paper, glue, and ink were readily available during the time the diary was said to have been written. They concluded that the diary is authentic, and their findings were published in what has become known as the "Critical Edition" of the diary.[146] In 1990, the Hamburg Regional Court confirmed the diary's authenticity.[147]

In 1991, Holocaust deniers Robert Faurisson and Siegfried Verbeke produced a booklet titled "The Diary of Anne Frank: A Critical Approach", in which they revived the allegation that Otto Frank wrote the diary. Purported evidence, as before, included several contradictions in the diary, that the prose style and handwriting were not those of a teenager, and that hiding in the Achterhuis would have been impossible.[148] In 1993, the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel filed a civil lawsuit to prohibit further distribution of Faurisson and Verbeke's booklet in the Netherlands. In 1998, the Amsterdam District Court ruled in favour of the claimants, forbade any further denial of the authenticity of the diary and unsolicited distribution of publications to that effect, and imposed a penalty of 25,000 guilders per infringement.[149]
Censored sections

Since the original publication, several sections of Anne's diaries which were initially edited out have been revealed and included in new editions.[150] These contain passages relating to her sexuality, exploration of her genitalia, and her thoughts on menstruation.[151][152] Following the conclusion of an ownership dispute in 2001, new editions have also incorporated pages removed by Otto Frank prior to publication which contain critical remarks about her parents' strained marriage and discuss her difficult relationship with her mother.[153][154] Two additional pages which Anne had pasted over with brown paper were deciphered in 2018, and contained an attempt to explain sex education and a handful of "dirty" jokes.[152][155]
Legacy
People waiting in line in front of the Anne Frank House entrance in Amsterdam

On 3 May 1957, a group of Dutch citizens, including Otto Frank, established the Anne Frank Stichting in an effort to rescue the Prinsengracht building from demolition and to make it accessible to the public. The Anne Frank House opened on 3 May 1960. It consists of the Opekta warehouse and offices and the Achterhuis, all unfurnished so that visitors can walk freely through the rooms. Some personal relics of the former occupants remain, such as movie star photographs glued by Anne to a wall, a section of wallpaper on which Otto Frank marked the height of his growing daughters, and a map on the wall where he recorded the advance of the Allied Forces, all now protected behind acrylic glass. The House provides information via the internet and offers exhibitions. From the small room which was once home to Peter van Pels, a walkway connects the building to its neighbors, also purchased by the Foundation. These other buildings are used to house the diary, as well as rotating exhibits that chronicle aspects of the Holocaust and more contemporary examinations of racial intolerance around the world.[156] One of Amsterdam's main tourist attractions, it received an average of 1.2 million visitors between 2011 and 2020.[157]
A bronze statue of a smiling Anne Frank, wearing a short dress and standing with her arms behind her back, sits upon a stone plinth with a plaque reading "Anne Frank 1929–1945". The statue is in a small square, and behind it is a brick building with two large windows, and a bicycle. The statue stands between the two windows.
Statue of Anne Frank, by Mari Andriessen, outside the Westerkerk in Amsterdam

In 1963, Otto Frank and his second wife, Elfriede Geiringer-Markovits, set up the Anne Frank Fonds as a charitable foundation, based in Basel, Switzerland. Upon his death, Otto willed the diary's copyright to the Fonds, on the provision that the first 80,000 Swiss francs in income each year was to be distributed to his heirs. The Anne Frank Fonds represents the Frank family and administers the rights, inter alia, to the writings of Anne and Otto Frank and to the letters of the Frank family. It is the owner of the rights to translations, editions, compilations, and authorised books about Anne Frank and her family. The Fonds educate young people against racism, and loaned some of Anne Frank's papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington for an exhibition in 2003. Its annual report that year outlined its efforts to contribute on a global level, with support for projects in Germany, Israel, India, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.[158]

In 1997, the Anne Frank Educational Centre (Jugendbegegnungsstätte Anne Frank) was opened in the Dornbusch neighbourhood of Frankfurt, where Frank lived with her family until 1934. The centre is "a place where both young people and adults can learn about the history of National Socialism and discuss its relevance to today."[159]
The Anne Frank School in Amsterdam
A large tree, devoid of foliage
The Anne Frank tree in the garden behind the Anne Frank House

The Merwedeplein apartment, where the Frank family lived from 1933 until 1942, remained privately owned until the 2000s. After featuring in a television documentary, the building—in a serious state of disrepair—was purchased by a Dutch housing corporation. Aided by photographs taken by the Frank family and descriptions in letters written by Anne Frank, it was restored to its 1930s appearance. Teresien da Silva of the Anne Frank House and Frank's cousin, Bernhard "Buddy" Elias, contributed to the restoration project. It opened in 2005. Each year, a writer who is unable to write freely in their own country is selected for a year-long tenancy, during which they reside and write in the apartment. The first writer selected was the Algerian novelist and poet El-Mahdi Acherchour.[156]

Anne Frank is included as one of the topics in the Canon of the Netherlands, which was prepared by a committee headed by Frits van Oostrom and presented to the Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Maria van der Hoeven, in 2006. The Canon is a list of fifty topics that aims to provide a chronological summary of Dutch history to be taught in primary schools and the first two years of secondary school in the Netherlands. A revised version, which still includes her as one of the topics, was presented to the Dutch government on 3 October 2007,[160] and approved in 2020.[161]

In June 2007, "Buddy" Elias donated some 25,000 family documents to the Anne Frank House. Among the artefacts are Frank family photographs taken in Germany and the Netherlands and the letter Otto Frank sent his mother in 1945, informing her that his wife and daughters had perished in Nazi concentration camps.[162]

In November 2007, the Anne Frank tree—by then infected with a fungal disease affecting the tree trunk—was scheduled to be cut down to prevent it from falling on the surrounding buildings. Dutch economist Arnold Heertje said about the tree: "This is not just any tree. The Anne Frank tree is bound up with the persecution of the Jews."[163] The Tree Foundation, a group of tree conservationists, started a civil case to stop the felling of the horse chestnut, which received international media attention. A Dutch court ordered city officials and conservationists to explore alternatives and come to a solution.[164] The parties built a steel construction that was expected to prolong the life of the tree up to 15 years.[163] However, it was only three years later, on 23 August 2010, that gale-force winds blew down the tree.[165] Eleven saplings from the tree were distributed to museums, schools, parks and Holocaust remembrance centres through a project led by the Anne Frank Center USA. The first sapling was planted in April 2013 at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis. Saplings were also sent to a school in Little Rock, Arkansas, the scene of a desegregation battle; Liberty Park (Manhattan), which honours victims of the September 11 attacks; and other sites in the United States.[166] Another horse chestnut tree honouring Frank was planted in 2010 at Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, Alabama.[167]

Over the years, several films about Anne Frank appeared. Her life and writings have inspired a diverse group of artists and social commentators to make reference to her in literature, popular music, television, and other media. These include The Anne Frank Ballet by Adam Darius,[168] first performed in 1959, and the choral works Annelies (2005)[169] and The Beauty That Still Remains by Marcus Paus (2015).[170] The only known footage of the real Anne Frank comes from a 1941 silent film recorded for her newlywed next-door neighbor. She is seen leaning out of a second-floor window in an attempt to better view the bride and groom. The couple, who survived the war, gave the film to the Anne Frank House.[171]

In 1999, Time named Anne Frank among the heroes and icons of the 20th century on their list The Most Important People of the Century, stating: "With a diary kept in a secret attic, she braved the Nazis and lent a searing voice to the fight for human dignity".[139] Philip Roth called her the "lost little daughter" of Franz Kafka.[172] Madame Tussauds wax museum unveiled an exhibit featuring a likeness of Anne Frank in 2012.[173] Asteroid 5535 Annefrank was named in her honour in 1995, after having been discovered in 1942.[174]

As of 2018, there are over 270 schools named after Anne Frank worldwide. 100 of them are in Germany, 89 in France, 45 in Italy, 17 in the Netherlands (among them the 6th Montessori School in Amsterdam which Frank herself attended until 1941), 4 in Brazil, 4 in the United States (among them the Anne Frank Inspire Academy), 2 in Bulgaria and one each in Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, El Salvador, Spain, Hungary, Israel, Nepal, Uruguay and Sweden.[175] In 2020, the first of a series of Anne Frank Children's Human Rights Memorials was placed adjacent to a high school in Maaleh, Adumim, outside of Jerusalem.[176] In 2021, the second memorial was unveiled in Antigua, Guatemala,[177] and another is in fabrication in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to be opened on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27 January 2022.[178] In 2023, a plan to rename a daycare centre in Tangerhütte, Germany, named for Anne Frank since 1970, was met with international outcry and eventually dropped.[179][180]

On 25 June 2022, a slideshow Google Doodle was dedicated in the honour of Anne Frank marking the 75th anniversary of the publication of her diary.[181]

    Anne Frank Children's Human Rights Memorial in Antigua, Guatemala
    Anne Frank Children's Human Rights Memorial in Antigua, Guatemala
    Anne Frank Center in New York
    Anne Frank Center in New York
    Byron Gómez Chavarría, Mural of Anne Frank with birds and hand prints of children (2017), Anne Frankschool, Utrecht, the Netherlands, 2020
    Byron Gómez Chavarría, Mural of Anne Frank with birds and hand prints of children (2017), Anne Frankschool, Utrecht, the Netherlands, 2020
    Anne Frank Children's Human Rights Memorial designed by Sam Philipe, Jerusalem
    Anne Frank Children's Human Rights Memorial designed by Sam Philipe, Jerusalem
    Statue of Anne Frank made by Pieter d'Hont (1959) in the Janskerkhof, Utrecht
    Statue of Anne Frank made by Pieter d'Hont (1959) in the Janskerkhof, Utrecht
On 15 February 1909, Miep Gies was born into a working class family in Vienna, as Hermine Santruschitz (later spelt in the Netherlands as Santrouschitz). She was five years old when the First World War broke out. At first she thought all the soldiers in the streets were rather exciting. However, father and mother Santruschitz could barely make ends meet, both during and after the war. The serious food scarcity had a grave impact, and after their second daughter was born in 1919, there was even less food to go around. Hermine wasn't a strong child to begin with, and due to the lack of food she became undernourished and was often unwell. ‘I was a small child to begin with, and seemed to be wasting away, rather than growing normally. My legs were sticks dominated by bony kneecaps. My teeth were soft. When I was ten years ol, my parents had another child; another daughter. Now there was even less food for us all. My condition was worsening, and my parents were told that something had to be done or I would die.’

In the fall of 1920 she was suddenly thrown a lifeline: a Dutch workers' association had taken the initiative to set up and aid program for Austrian working class children. These children could come to the Netherlands for a number of months to regain their strength, and Hermine was one of the lucky ones, permitted to go along.  On a cold winterday in December 1920, a train filled with weakened Viennese children departed for the unknown town of Leiden, in the unknown country of the Netherlands. ‘Although I was eleven, I looked much younger. My long, fine dark blond hair was held back with a large piece of cotton cloth tied into a big puffed bow. A card was hung around my neck. On it was printed a strange name, the name of people I had never met. The train was filled with many children like me, all with cards around their necks.’

Small rucksack Miep Gies, December 1920
The small rucksack that Miep brought when she traveled from Vienna to Leiden in December 1920. Click on the photo to enlarge. The train arrived in Leiden and the children were woken up and led into a large hall. Unfamiliar people tried to read the names on the tags, and Hermine was picked out by a 'not very big, but very strong-looking man'. 'I wasn't afraid and willingly went along with him'. The strong man's name was Laurens Nieuwenburg, and he was foreman at a coal company in Leiden. He brought Hermine to a small house just outside the town where he lived with his wife, four young sons and a daughter. The eldest boy spoke a few words of German and acted as interpreter. ‘Despite the language problem, all the children were kind to me. Kindness, in my depleted condition, was very important to me. It was medicine as much as the bread, the marmalade, the good Duch milk and butter an chees, the toasty temperature of the warm rooms. And, ahhh, the little chocolate flakes known as “hailstones” and other chocolate bits called “little mice” they taught me to put on thickly buttered bread-treats I’d never imagined before.'

Miep (on the right) around 12 years old, with foster mother in Leiden, around 1921.
Miep (on the right) around 12 years old, with foster mother in Leiden, around 1921.
The family Nieuwenburg soon started calling Hermine Miep, a more casual, informal name. Miep went to school, soon learnt to speak Dutch, and by the spring of 1921 was the best of her class. She learnt to ride a bicycle, learnt to prepare her sandwiches, but the quintessential Dutch pastime of skating was not for her. The family had an interest in politics, and they read the newspaper every day. They also enjoyed classical music. Miep embraced their interests, and she enjoyed discussing what she read in the newspaper. Initially she was to stay for just three months, but on account of her weak health this was prolonged with another three months, and after that there was no more talk of prolongation, Miep simply satyed in Leiden. When she was thirteen years old, she moved along with the family to the Rivierenbuurt in Amsterdam. At that time, this neighbourhood still lay at the edge of town, overlooking the Amstel River and the pastures beyond. Nonetheless, Miep was now living in real city, and she loved the liveliness of the streets, all the shops, the architecture of the tall canal houses, the evident political life and the many concert halls and cinemas.

A portrait of Miep, around 1925.
A portrait of Miep, around 1925.In 1925, when Miep had turned sixteen, she visited her parents and sister in Vienna, accompanied by Mr and Mrs Nieuwenburg. She was happy to see the town again but did not really feel at ease with her family, mainly because she feared having to stay in Vienna. However, her mother understood that her eldest daughter had become so integrated in Dutch life that staying in Vienna would make her unhappy. ‘I did not want to hurt my natural family’s feelings, and I was still young and needed their consent. But I wanted desperately to return to the Netherlands. My sensibilities were Dutch, the quality of my feelings also Dutch.' Miep was relieved to return to Amsterdam, together with her foster parents Mr and Mrs Nieuwenburg.

Living in Amsterdam Miep grew up an introvert, inquisitive young woman. She developed an interest in philosophy, read voraciously, and scribbled full exercise book after exercise book with all her attempt to understand life, just as Anne Frank would so years later. No-one knew of Miep's writings, and she didn't want anyone to know, either. And as suddenly as the urge to write had taken hold of her, it disappeared again, leaving her feeling embarassed for all those intimate thoughts, and afraid that someone might read them. So she ripped up all her exercise books, and embarked on a new phase in life. By now she was eighteen years old, she finished high school and started work as an office assistant. ‘Although I continued to be a staunchly private and independent woman, my zest for life turned outward again.'

After Miep Santruschitz left school at the age of 18, she first found a job as office assistant at a textile company. She worked there for six years, until she was laid off in 1933 on account of the economic crisis. Now aged 24, she remained unemployed for a few months, since it was difficult to find a new job. But she was lucky: an upstairs neighbor, who worked as a sales representative, told her of a temporary vacancy at one of her permanent clients, the Nederlandsche Opekta company, specialized in the trade of Opekta, a substance used in the household production of jam. The neighbor arranged an interview with Mr. Otto Frank, the company's director, established at Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal 120-126 in Amsterdam. On a Monday morning she rode her bicycle to that address, wearing a carefully ironed, self-made dress and blouse with high heel shoes, and her hair done up according to the latest Hollywood fashion with a loose knot in her neck. Her friends said she looked like the American film star Norma Shearer, and she wore high heels to compensate for her slight length of just 1.52 meters.

Two passport photos of Otto Frank, ca. 1933
Two passport photos of Otto Frank, ca. 1933She was received cordially at the office of Otto Frank, and after he apologized for his poor Dutch they quickly switched to speaking German, their native tongue.’ 'He must have responded favorably to me, because he said to me, “Before you can start, you must come with me to the kitchen.” My cheeks felt hot. Did I have the job? I couldn’t imagine what he could want in the kitchen: perhaps a cup of coffee? But naturally, I followed him into the kitchen. He handed me a sheet of paper. “Here’s the recipe. Now make jam!” He turned and left, leaving me standing alone in the kitchen.’

Miep was once again lucky, as she was hired for the job although there were other candidates. She came through the test of competence with flying colors, making jam and continuing to do so for the next two weeks. She became a veritable expert and knew exactly how to achieve the right color, density and fruity flavor. Otto Frank later even made an commercial for Opekta, in which Miep appears as the expert jam maker.

Mr. Frank told her that he lived in a small hotel in the center of town while waiting for the arrival of his family, who were still staying with his mother-in-law in the German town of Aachen. He told her about his wife Edith and their two young daughters, Margot Betti and Anneliese Marie. Margot was the eldest, born in 1926, and Anne was three years younger. Otto Frank was lonely and hoped to be reunited with his family in Amsterdam as soon as possible. He developed a good relationship with Miep. Both could passionately discuss political topics, although they often held the same opinion about various situation and events. Both were vehemently opposed to Adolf Hitler, who had been inaugurated as the German Chancellor following his election victory earlier that year. Otto Frank had left his homeland on account of Hitler's anti-Jewish politics.

Advertising Opekta jam.
Advertising Opekta jam.After the first two weeks of making jam, Mr. Frank brought Miep out of the kitchen and pointed her to a desk next to the window. "You’ll now sit at this desk. I call it the Complaint and Information Desk. You’ll know why shortly.” Miep took the calls from indignant housewives that had bought the Opekta jam kit but had not followed the instructions, and whose jam therefore failed. It was Miep's job to first calm the ladies down, to then ask them to describe the end product, and to deduce from that what mistake they had made and how it could be remedied. The result was generally a customer satisfied after all.

Miep enjoyed her work and counted herself lucky for having found a nice job in a pleasant setting, while many of her peers remained jobless in those challenging years of crisis. Besides Otto Frank, there was also a Mr. Kugler that worked at Opekta. He was a serious man in his 30s who never joked around. Victor Kugler was born in Austria, just like Miep, and he mainly minded his own business. He would send the messenger boy Henk out on errands and would check his work. Henk was a friendly, agreeable boy. Miss Heel was another of Miep's colleagues. Miep had been hired to replace Miss Heel while she was ill, but after she recovered and returned the work, Miep was allowed to stay on, sharing a room with Henk. Miep didn't get along too well with Miss Heel, especially not after she became member of the NSB (a Dutch political association that sided with the Nazis). After some time Miss Heel called in sick and never came back. "Jokingly, Mr. Frank announced: “... an easy way to lose a Nazi.”

At the office, around 1936.
At the office, around 1936.In the fall of 1933, Edith Frank traveled up and down between Aachen and Amsterdam, attempting to find a suitable house. In November she succeeded and from then on Otto Frank rented a house close to where Miep lived in the neighborhood of Amsterdam-South, a district that had become home to many German refugees in recent years. Margot joined them in Amsterdam in December, and Anne soon followed in February 1934. Edith's mother, Mrs. Holländer, also moved to Amsterdam.

In 1937 the Nederlandsche Opekta company moved to Singel 400, a tall canal house of a few floors, with a stockroom on the ground floor. Since the Opekta trade for fruit jams was a seasonal trade, Otto Frank sought to expand the business activities. He met Hermann van Pels, who was specialized in herbs and spices for meat. Otto Frank thought that this was a suitable market to expand into, and he invited Hermann van Pels to join his company. Hermann was an old business friend of Otto who had lived many years in Germany, although his parents were Dutch Jews. He too had fled Hitler Germany with his German Jewish wife named Auguste, and their son Peter. Van Pels became the consultant and specialist for the Pectacon spice trade, as the second component of the Nederlandsche Opekta company.

In January 1940, the company again moved to larger premises, this time to Prinsengracht 263, nearby the Westerkerk (Wester Church). The building consisted of a front and rear house with office space and a large stockroom. Henk had left the company and two new stockroom assistants had joined. In the office, Miep had a new colleague, the 21-year old Bep (Elisabeth) Voskuijl. Bep and Miep got along very well, becoming friends besides being colleagues. Otto Frank had also taken on Johannes Kleinman, described by Miep as "a calm personality, someone that you immediately trust". Frank and Kleiman worked for Opekta and took care of the financial aspects. Kugler and Van Pels worked for Pectacon and concentrated on the spices. They specialized in herbs and spices used to make sausages.

In the office at Prinsengracht 263, May 1941. With Victor Kugler, Bep, Miep and 2 personnel members.
In the office at Prinsengracht 263, May 1941. With Victor Kugler, Bep, Miep and 2 personnel members.

Besides her office job, Miep Gies had a busy social life. She enjoyed social events and, as so many of her peers, attended dancing lessons. During the 'free style dancing' organized on Friday and Saturday evenings, she and her friends would practice what they had learnt in the preceding week. ‘I was such a peppy dancer and loved dancing so much that I was never left sitting. Young men always seemed to be holding their large hands out to me, to dance with me and to escort me home afterward.’

Although she counted several agreeable young men among her friends, there was one that really caught her eye. He was '(...) a very tall, well-dressed, highly appealing Dutchman a few years older than I. His name was Jan Gies. (...) I found Jan most attractive. His thick fair hair gleamed. His eyes were warm and full of life.'

Miep and Jan had met each other while working at the textile company. She worked there as a typist and he was an accountant. They became friends and stayed in touch, even after she was laid off and started working at Otto Frank's Opekta company, and he became a social worker with the Amsterdam Social Service. They both lived in the Amsterdam district called Rivierenbuurt, except that he had his own room with people living in Rijnstraat, while Miep still lived with her foster parents and shared a room with her sister Catherina.

The Tip Top cinema in Jodenbreestraat, ca. 1935
The Tip Top cinema in Jodenbreestraat, ca. 1935Jan and Miep's friendship evolved into a love affair. They started seeing each other increasingly frequently and discovered that they both had a passion for music by Mozart, with the same favorite flute and harp concerto. Every Saturday evening they went to the Tip Top cinema in Jodenbreestraat, and on sunny days they went on bicycle outings. ‘One bicycle, that is. Jan would pedal, and I’d sit sideways behind him, my legs raised above the ground, my skirt flapping (away in the wind, my back pressed outward, balancing me, my arms loosely holding Jan by his waist. All of Amsterdam would mount its trusty black bicycle on any warm, sunny day, just like us. Whole families could fit on a bicycle or two.' They also enjoyed strolling through the flea market in the old Jewish neighborhood by the Portuguese synagogue in Muiderstraat.

At the time that Miep worked at the Singel address and Jan at the municipal Social Service, they often took a walk together during the lunch break. That is how Jan got to know Otto Frank, Miep's employer. Miep thought that they looked alike in terms of build, both being tall and slender, but also in terms of character. They had the same ironic sense of humor and were both principled men that wasted no words. The first time that Otto Frank invited Miep for dinner at his home, he asked her to bring Jan along as well. The dinner was not a once-only affair, and during the many visits that followed, Miep and Jan became increasingly well-acquainted with the whole Frank family, including the two young daughters, Margot and Anne. During these evenings, the terrifying events taking place around the world were also discussed at length over coffee and cake, sometimes in the company of other friends and acquaintances of Edith and Otto Frank. ‘As soon as Margot and Anne were called to the dinner table, we curtailed our discussion of thes dreadful things. (We lightened) up our voices and spoke only about cheerful and pleasant subjects. Subjects suitable for innocent and impressionable children’s ears.'

Miep and Jan were eager to become engaged, but didn't have any savings to pay for a wedding or to buy furniture for their own home. Although they very much wanted to start living a shared life, as so many other couples at that time their dating phase went on and on. When Miep turned thirty and Jan was almost 34, they decided to take the gamble in early 1939, and started seeking a house for themselves. As soon as they found something they would also be able to get married. Yet it seemed impossible to find a dwelling. All rooms, attics and basements were already rented out, often to people that had fled Hitler's regime. Amsterdam was filled to bursting.  Hitler's Nazi Germany had already swallowed up Austria in 1938, and on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. And eight months later, it was the Netherlands' turn.

Although Miep had been living in the Netherlands since December of 1920, she had always kept her Austrian nationality. Since Austria no longer existed after its annexation by Nazi Germany in 1938, Miep tried to obtain the Dutch nationality in 1939 through a letter to Queen Wilhemina. Below is the carbon copy of that letter to the Queen.

Carbon copy of a letter that Miep Gies wrote to Queen Wilhemina in 1939, requesting the Dutch nationality.
Carbon copy of a letter that Miep Gies wrote to Queen Wilhemina in 1939, requesting the Dutch nationality.
Despite the considerable housing shortage, Miep and Jan had a turn of luck shortly after the German invasion, when Otto Frank pointed out an advertisement offering rooms to rent in their own neighborhood, at Hunzestraat 25. The next day Mr. Frank accompanied Miep to see the rooms, before going to the office. The landlady was a Jewish Mrs. Stoppelman, who wanted to rent out two rooms of her house because she had recently and quite unexpectedly turned single. Her husband had, by some sudden chance occurrence, ended up on a ship sailing from Ijmuiden to England. He had arrived there safe and sound, but Mrs. Stoppelman had no idea if she would ever see him again. She was relieved to hear that Miep was eager to rent the rooms. Miep initially thought it better not to tell her that she and Jan were not yet married, but once they got to know each other better, they decided it was safe to confess to this. They simply lacked the money to get married any time soon.

Miep and Jan Gies, fall of 1985, in Amsterdam
Miep and Jan Gies, fall of 1985, in AmsterdamWhile the Germans surged through most of Europe like a tidal wave, life in Amsterdam seemed to continue much as before. It was a beautiful summer and Miep and Jan were happy. But as autumn approached, the directives targeting Jews gradually became more in number and graver in scope. ‘We felt deep anxiety for our Jewish friends. I was eaten by a feeling of terrible regret. How had we been so naive as to think that our neutrality would be respected by an immoral man like Adolf Hitler? If only our Jewish friends had gone to America or Canada! Henk and I felt special pangs of regret for the Franks, with their two young children. Mrs. Frank, in fact, had two brothers who had gone to America.'

All of a sudden, Miep was summoned to the German consulate. After handing over her Austrian passport, she was asked whether it was true that she had refused to join a Nazi girls' association. When she confirmed that this was so, the German entered a big black X next to the expiry date and returned her passport with the words: “Your passport has been invalidated. You must return to Vienna within three months. Unless you marry a Dutch man.”

Of course Jan and Miep wanted to marry, but to do so she needed to obtain her birth certificate from Vienna. It seemed impossible to arrange for this within three months. Even in normal circumstances, without any war going on, this would already take about one year. Nevertheless, Miep decided to do all she could, and she immediately sent a letter to her uncle in Vienna, with the highly urgent request to send her the birth certificate as quickly as possible. Although his attempts initially failed, Miep's highly persevering uncle finally got lucky. A friendly civil servant at the Viennese city hall had fond memories of the Netherlands, and she provided Uncle Anton with the birth certificate of Hermine Santruschitz. When Miep received the certificate in Amsterdam, she and Jan immediately made an appointment at the city hall to get married. The wedding date was set for July 16, 1941.

It was a marvelous summer day on which Jan and Miep, along with two other couples (which was the most affordable option), stood before the municipal official, anxious that the official might refuse to conclude the wedding because of the black X in Miep's passport, forcing her to return to Vienna instead. But Miep was once again fortunate, for after carefully studying the passport, the official indicated that everything was in order. Miep not only married the love of her life Jan, but also officially became a Dutch national.
Jan and Miep Gies in the Secret Annex by the bookcase that closed off the hiding space, ca. 1988
Jan and Miep Gies in the Secret Annex by the bookcase that closed off the hiding space, ca. 1988Nine months later, Miep once again solemnly said 'yes', this time when Otto Frank told her of his plans to go into hiding, along with the Van Pels family, and he asked her whether she was willing to take on the responsibility of caring for seven hiders. "Of course", is what she said. Jan, too, pledged his unconditional help.

Elsewhere on this website you can read more about the time that Miep and Jan Gies were two of the helpers for the people hiding in the Secret Annex. In addition to helping those hiding in the Secret Annex, Miep and Jan had also taken a hider into their own home on Hunzestraat, in the spring of 1943. It was a Dutch student who had refused to sign the German oath of allegiance, imposed on all students. Jan was furthermore closely involved with an underground network through his work for the municipal Social Service. The betrayal that led to the arrest of the eight people in hiding on Prinsengracht, and their subsequent deportation to various concentration camps, did not lead to the arrest of Miep and Jan Gies.

When Otto Frank arrived on Miep and Jan's doorstep in the summer of 1945, he would continue to live with them until 1953. His wife Edith and daughters Margot and Anne had perished in the camps. Miep was able to entrust Anne's diaries to Otto Frank's care, and he saw to it that they were published in 1947. Jan and Miep's son Paul was born on 30 July 1950. They continued to live in Amsterdam until Jan passed away in 1993. After that Miep moved to the same town in North Holland where her son Paul lives.

When Miep Gies (then still called Santruschitz) first met Otto Frank for the job interview at his Nederlandsche Opekta company in the late summer of 1933, they immediately took to each other. Otto Frank decided to hire Miep to replace a sick employee. When this Miss Heel reported back for work a few months later, Miep stayed on. She very much enjoyed her work at the office. Of course she did not discuss personal matters with her boss, but he had told her that his wife and two young daughters were still staying with his mother-in-law in Aachen, Germany. As soon as they found a house in Amsterdam to live in, the entire family would come over. Although he didn't express it, Miep sensed that he felt lonely without his family.

Whereas personal matters were discussed little at the office, world affairs all the more. As Miep remembers: ‘Mr. Frank and I quickly established a rapport as well, discovering our common passion for politics. We found ourselves on the same side of things. Although I had been brought up not to hate, I disapproved of the fanatic Adolf Hitler, who had recently seized power in Germany. Mr. Frank felt the same way, although much more personally, as he was Jewish. Mr. Frank had left Germany because of Hitler’s anti-Jewish policies.(...) Holding our little discussions in German, we agreed that it was just as well to turn one’s back on Hitler’s Germany and be secure and protected by our adopted homeland, Holland.'

Anne Frank (on the left) with her mother Edith and sister Margot wearing the white fur jacket, photographed by Otto Frank, March 1933 in Germany.
Anne Frank (on the left) with her mother Edith and sister Margot wearing the white fur jacket, photographed by Otto Frank, March 1933 in Germany.By November 1933 the Frank family had found a house, in the same Amsterdam neighborhood where Miep lived with her foster parents. Edith Frank had come from Aachen a few times to search for a house, and once they had succeeded, the eldest daughter Margot joined them in December. By way of a birthday gift for Margot, Anne arrived in February 1934, then aged four. Shortly afterward Miep met Anne and her mother at the office. Otto Frank introduced his wife and daughter to her. Anne was wearing a white, fuzzy fur jacket and was shy and inquisitive at the same time. Miep brought coffee for the adults and a glass of milk for Anne. ‘Anne and I walked toward my desk. She looked with fascination at my shiny black typewriter. I held her little fingers to the keys and pressed. Her eyes flashed when the keys jumped up and printed black letters onto the invoice rolled into the machine. Then I directed her attention to the window – just the kind of lively scene I thought any child would like. I was right. The view caught her interest: the streetcars, the bicycles, the passersby. Watching Anne, I thought, Now, here’s the kind of child I’d like to have someday. Quiet, obedient, curious about everything.'

The apartment building at Amsterdam's Merwedeplein where the Frank family lived from 1933 to 1942.
The apartment building at Amsterdam's Merwedeplein where the Frank family lived from 1933 to 1942.Miep started dating Jan Gies. During their lunch break, he often picked up Miep to go for a stroll. In that way he got to know Otto Frank as well. When Otto Frank one day invited Miep to come for dinner at their home, he added: “And bring Mr. Gies,” he added. I accepted, honored to be invited home by my boss to share a meal with his family.' As prescribed by etiquette, Miep and Jan rang the Frank doorbell promptly as six p.m. Otto Frank looked as well-groomed as at the office, but clearly a bit more laid-back. Mrs. Frank was just as friendly and as reserved as when Miep first met her. Edith Frank had not yet mastered Dutch very well, and since Jan was proficient in German, they continued to converse in German. They heard from Edith how she was still rather homesick for Germany, admired the antique furniture, made the acquaintance of the family cat, and discussed world events. When sitting down for dinner the two daughters Anne and Margot were called to join them, now eight and ten years old, respectively. After dinner, the girls disappeared into their room to do homework. Miep and Jan had another cup of coffee with Mr. and Mrs. Frank and continued their conversation. Again as prescribed by etiquette, after the second cup of coffee they thanked them for an enjoyable evening and left. This first dinner was the first of many to follow. Although these evenings kept their formal character, the personal stories that Edith shared with them allowed Jan and Miep to get to know the Franks better and better. The latest news was always a topic of conversation, but as soon as the children were called to the table the fearsome events taking place in the world were no longer discussed, and the adults switched instead to cheerful topics and stories. Anne would be the one doing most of the talking, Margot was much more reticent. Just as Miep and Jan, Anne loved the cinema and at the table they would discuss their favorite films and film stars in the minutest detail.

Besides for dinners, Miep and Jan were also invited for the Saturday afternoons with coffee and cake. On these afternoons the Frank family held open house, and Edith would present home-baked cheesecake or sponge cake. The other guests were all Germans, mainly Jewish refugees that had fled Nazi Germany, just like the Franks. Everyone was very politically aware, and the developments in Germany were discussed at great length, with everyone talking at the same time amidst clouds of tobacco smoke. ‘Although these people had not all known each other beforehand, they had much in common. Mr. Frank liked the idea of introducing these refugees to Dutch people who were interested in their lot, in why they had fled, and in their welfare here in Holland. Mr. Frank always introduced Jan Gies and me as “our Dutch friends”.’ Among these Saturday afternoon guests were Auguste and Hermann van Pels and Fritz Pfeffer. They would later be joining the Frank family in hiding in the Secret Annex.

Since Miep and Jan had no savings with which to furnish a house, to get married and to start their own life together, their dating phase continued for much longer than they would have wanted. There was also a severe housing shortage, due to the immense influx of refugees into Amsterdam. In 1939, when Miep had just turned thirty, they decided to nevertheless make work of finding a home and to then get married. It was Otto Frank who, shortly after the German invasion, pointed out an advertisement to Miep, offering rooms in their own neighborhood. The next day Mr. Frank accompanied Miep to see the rooms. The landlady was the Jewish Mrs. Stoppelman, and Miep decided to take the rooms.

Otto and Anne Frank at the wedding of Miep and Jan Gies.
Otto and Anne Frank at the wedding of Miep and Jan Gies.After the initial panic and chaos that followed the German invasion and subsequent occupation, by the summer of 1940 life seemed to recover its daily routine. However, as fall set in, the first anti-Jewish measures were enforced. Though not too worrisome at first, the measures gradually become more oppressive. Miep and Jan grew increasingly worried for their Jewish friends, but they adapted and life carried on. On July 16, 1941, Miep and Jan were married with a small group of friends and family members in attendance. Mr. Frank had shut the office for the day so that Miep's colleagues could also attend. Otto Frank brought along his youngest daughter Anne, while Edith stayed at home to care for their sick daughter Margot. 'Anne’s eyes flicked nervously back and forth from Jan to me. She stayed close to her father, hanging on his hand. Perhaps we were the first romantic bride and groom she had ever seen in the flesh. I could see as she looked at Jan that she thought of him as a gallant, dashing figure. Perhaps she thought of me in the same way? A wedding was the number one romantic occasion for a girl of twelve.’

After the wedding ceremony, Otto Frank announced that he would be giving a party at and on behalf of the office, the next day. It was no use protesting, and Anne immediately called out that she would be there too. The next day the office was indeed transformed into a party room. ‘One of the travelling agents for the firm had brought liverwurst, sliced beef, salami, cheese, everything was laid out on plates. None of us had seen so much meat in a long time. “Too much food,” I told Mr. Frank. “Nonsense,” he said, smiling, so pleased to have something to celebrate in these grim times.’ As an accomplished waitress, Anne went from guest to guest with the dishes and on behalf of her family and the office personnel, she presented a silver plate to the newly-weds.

Scraper from the NV Handelsvereeniging Gies & Co.
Scraper from the NV Handelsvereeniging Gies & Co.The wedding provided a welcome two-day relief from reality: the anti-Jewish measures had now turned into a steady stream of restrictions and prohibitions. The open house afternoons at the Frank family were discontinued. Otto Frank asked Jan Gies if he would be willing to become commissioner of Pectacon, the spice trade, with Victor Kugler as executive director. Frank felt that his position in the company was starting to endanger everyone concerned, so he wished to withdraw.  He would remain involved as adviser, and Johannes Kleiman would become managing director of the Nederlandsche Opekta company. The Pectacon firm would henceforth be called Gies & Co. On December 18, 1941 all the changes were authorized at a public notary's office. Jan was happy that he could help Otto Frank, and then with something as simple as with his surname.

Star of David that all Jews were obliged to wear. This one belonged to either Margot Frank or Mrs. Stoppelman, the landlady of Miep Gies
Star of David that all Jews were obliged to wear. This one belonged to either Margot Frank or Mrs. Stoppelman, the landlady of Miep GiesFrom spring 1942, Jews were obliged to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothes. Not long after that, Otto Frank had a question for Miep. He told her that he and his wife had decided to go into hiding with the children, together with Hermann and Auguste van Pels and their son Peter, in the rear annex of the office premises on Prinsengracht. 'He took a breath and asked, “Miep, are you willing to take on the responsibility of taking care of us while we are in hiding?”
“Of course,” I answered. There is a look between two people once or twice in a lifetime that cannot be described by words. That look passed between us.’
What Miep's affirmative reply to Otto Frank's question entailed is described in another chapter on this website. Click here to see a video excerpt in which Miep Gies talks about the question that Otto Frank put to her.

All quotes in this chapter are taken from the book Anne Frank Remembered. The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family. By Miep Gies with Alison Gold. Simon and Schuster, New York 1987. A new edition of the book is expected for early 2009.

It was not long after Otto Frank had asked four of his closest colleagues at the office whether they would be willing to assist his family and Hermann, Auguste and Peter van Pels if they were to go into hiding in the rear annex of the office building at Prinsengracht, that Margot Frank was summoned to report for the Arbeidseinsatz (work duty), in early June 1942. Immediately the Franks decided that now was the time to go into hiding. Miep and Jan went to the Frank family to help them prepare for their disappearance. ‘When we arrived at the Frank apartment, few words were exchanged. I could feel their urgency, an undercurrent of nearpanic. But I could feel their urgency, an undercurrent of nearpanic. But I could see that much needed to be organized and prepared. It was all too terrible.' Jan and Miep took as many clothes and shoes as possible to their own home, so that these could be brought to the Secret Annex at a later date.

The next morning, on Monday July 6, 1942, Miep went by bicycle to meet Margot at Merwedeplein, as planned. It was pouring rain. Margot mounted her own bicycle and together they rode off in the direction of the city center, like two colleagues on their way to work. They did not speak a word as they went, but steadily cycled along. They both realized that they had transformed from ordinary citizens into criminals. Miep was accompanying a Jewish girl, cycling on an illegal bicycle without a Star of David on her sleeve, on her way to go into hiding. Margot seemed as calm as ever, her face betrayed nothing. They had become accomplices, opposing the German occupiers.

Miep and Jan Gies in the Secret Annex, next to the bookcase that hid the entrance to the Secret Annex, around 1988
Miep and Jan Gies in the Secret Annex, next to the bookcase that hid the entrance to the Secret Annex, around 1988As soon as they arrived at the office, Margot disappeared through the door leading to the Secret Annex, and Miep sat down at her desk. One after the other her colleagues arrived, just like any other day at the office. Later that morning Otto, Edith and Anne came in, drenched by the rain. Miep received them and took them to the hiding place. In the afternoon Miep joined them there. ‘The situation was very upsetting. I wanted tot leave the family alone together. I couldn’t begin to imagine what they must be feeling to have walked away from everything they owned in the world – their home; a lifetime of gathered possessions; Anne’s little cat, Moortje. Keepsakes from the past. And friends. They had simply closed the door of their lives and had vanished from Amsterdam. Mrs. Frank’s face said it all. Quickly, I left them.' Click here for a video excerpt in which Miep Gies recounts the first day in hiding.

One week after the family Frank went into hiding, they were joined by Hermann, Auguste and their fifteen-year old son Peter van Pels. They took up residence in the upper floor of the Secret Annex, while the Franks shared the lower floor. In November 1942 an eighth person joined them, the dentist Dr. Fritz Pfeffer. From that moment he shared a room with Anne. Pfeffer was an acquaintance of the Frank and Van Pels families. Miep and Jan also knew him from the Saturday afternoons at the Frank home at Merwedeplein. Since several years he was also Miep's dentist. Hermann van Pels had been working in Otto Frank's company since 1938, so Miep and Jan knew him well. They had also gotten to know his wife through the Saturday afternoons at Merwedeplein.

The helpers, without whom the hiders could never have gone into hiding, were Miep Gies, Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman and Bep Voskuijl. Miep's husband Jan and Bep's father Johan had also pledged their unconditional help to the hiders. Aside from Jan they all worked at the office of Otto Frank. In fact, officially Jan was also part of the company, as Otto Frank had formally resigned as executive director of the company in December 1941, and Jan had become a commissioner of Pectacon, the firm's spice branch. Pectacon would henceforth be called Gies & Co.  Victor Kugler was appointed executive director and Johannes Kleiman became managing director of the Nederlandsche Opekta company. All of the company staff were on very friendly terms with each other. Otto Frank would continue to run the company from the Secret Annex.
October 1945, Otto Frank seated in the middle with Miep Gies and Johannes Kleiman on the left, and Bep Voskuijl and Victor Kugler on the right.
October 1945, Otto Frank seated in the middle with Miep Gies and Johannes Kleiman on the left, and Bep Voskuijl and Victor Kugler on the right.The tasks were divided among the four helpers: Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl took care of the daily grocery shopping. Every morning, before the others arrived at the office, Miep went to the Secret Annex to collect the shopping list for that day and to see how things were going. During the day she went shopping at the vegetable store and the butcher while Bep took care of bread and milk, which she brought to them during the lunch break. She would then have lunch with the Secret Annex occupants, telling them the latest news about the world outside. Every Saturday Miep brought them five library books. Johannes Kleiman and Victor Kugler looked after the safety of the hiders and arranged all the financial aspects. Thanks to his contacts at the municipality and with the National Organization for Assistance to Divers, Jan Gies was able to obtain ration cards. Bep's father Johan, the foreman of the stockroom at Prinsengracht, devised and built the swiveling bookcase that hid the entrance to the Secret Annex.


Anne Frank's diary. Source: website entoen.nu
Anne Frank's diary. Source: website entoen.nuOn January 28, 1944, Anne Frank expresses her amazement at the fact that there are so many noble people, selflessly helping and saving other people: ‘The best example of this is our own helpers, who have managed to pull us through so far and will hopefully bring us safely to shore, because otherwise they'll find themselves sharing the fate of those they're trying to protect. Never have they uttered a single word about the burden we must be, never have they complained that we're too much trouble. They come upstairs every day and talk to the men about business and politics, to the women about food and wartime difficulties and to the children about books and newspapers. They put on their most cheerful expressions, bring flowers and gifts for birthdays and holidays and are always ready to do what they can. That's something we should never forget; while others display their heroism in battle or against the Germans, our helpers prove theirs every day by their good spirits and affection.'

A so-called ‘ration stamp’ which entitled people to a small amount of food (meat, bread, butter). This one dates from October 1944.
A so-called ‘ration stamp’ which entitled people to a small amount of food (meat, bread, butter). This one dates from October 1944.
As the war dragged on, it became increasingly difficult to obtain the daily groceries for the eight hiders and for Jan and Miep as well. Since the spring of 1943, Jan and Miep also had a Dutch student in hiding in their own home on Hunzestraat. This student had refused to sign the German oath of allegiance, imposed on all students. To avoid being arrested and deported to Germany, he had to go into hiding and had found a safe place in Jan and Miep's home. This means that Miep had to go shopping every day for eleven people in total. Less and less was available, so the range of choice diminished accordingly. She felt like a hunter, continually on the prowl for her 'ever-hungry nestlings'. 'But slowly, I was turning into an unrelenting scavenger, and would make do even with scraps. I could not allow myself to get sick. I could not allow myself a holiday.'

It also became harder and harder to only bring positive news to the Secret Annex. By coincidence, Miep had seen the Van Pels family home cleared out by a moving company, on German orders. Miep had brought this piece of news to the Secret Annex, but it had upset Mrs. Van Pels so deeply that Miep decided to only bring neutral or positive news. ‘This wasn’t easy to do. Anne would have made a great detective. She’d sense that something was being withheld and she’d pull and squeeze, probe and stare me down, until I’d hear myself revealing just what I had decided not to reveal.' Miep also felt a bit uneasy sometimes about the unequal relationship that had grown between the helpers and the hiders. The hiders had put their lives entirely in the hands of the helpers, and that absolute dependency sometimes weighed down on her. Click here to see a video excerpt in which Miep talks about this.

Aside from the fear of discovery and arrest, the main fear of the hiders and helpers alike was to become ill. During office hours, the residents of the Secret Annex had to be as quiet as a mouse, as the stockroom assistants, for example, knew nothing of their presence. If one of the hiders were to catch a serious cold, the coughing and sneezing could well compromise their safety. A doctor's visit was out of the question of course, let alone any kind of operation. If one of the helpers were to fall sick, the other helpers would have to take over his or her tasks. November and December 1943 brought much anxiety: Miep, Bep, Mr. Kleiman and Anne all fell sick.  Fortunately, the situation was not drastic and toward the end of the year everyone was feeling better. Mr. Kugler, Mr. Kleiman, Bep, Jan and Miep celebrated the Friday before New Year's Eve in the Secret Annex. With some saved scraps of butter and flour, Miep had baked a spice cake. ‘The sight of our parade was like an elixer of pleasure. Before us, eight mouths began to salivate at once at the sight of the cake. Mrs. Frank put on some water for imitation coffee. Beer was poured as we all stood around the table. Anne noticed the message that I’d carved into the top of the cake and called it to everyone’s attention. With beer and coffee, we all paused to toast to message: PEACE 1944!'

Oberscharführer Karl Silberbauer of the SS.
Oberscharführer Karl Silberbauer of the SS.As we now know, it took more than a year for that peace to arrive. Except Otto Frank, none of the hiders would live to see it. On Friday August 4, 1944, Miep, Bep and Johannes Kleiman were seated at their desks in their shared office. Just after eleven a.m., Miep looked up from her work to see a man in civilian dress in the door opening, pointing a gun at them. This was the beginning of the end; someone had betrayed the eight hiders. At the start of the afternoon they were arrested and taken away, along with Johannes Kleiman and Victor Kugler. Bep had managed to slip away and Miep had the good fortune that the German supervising the arrest, SS officer Karl Silberbauer, turned out to be an Austrian from Vienna, Miep's birth town. He allowed her to stay at the office on condition that she promised not to flee, 'Aus persönliche Sympathie' ('out of personal sympathy'), said the Austrian. The hiders were deported to various concentration camps, and only Otto Frank would survive. Johannes Kleiman returned unexpectedly at the end of September 1944, the Germans had released him on account of his poor health. Victor Kugler came home after the war. Click here to see a video excerpt in which Miep Gies recounts the day of the arrest.

All quotations in this chapter, unless indicated otherwise, are taken from the book Anne Frank Remembered. The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family. By Miep Gies with Alison Gold. Simon and Schuster, New York 1987.
A new edition of the book is expected for early 2009.

During the period that the families Frank and Van Pels were in hiding, Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman ran Otto Frank's company. Otto Frank advised them from the Secret Annex, and in that way Mr. van Pels also remained involved with the business. When the eight hiders were finally arrested and taken away on August 4, 1944, along with their two helpers Kugler and Kleiman, Miep Gies was the only person that could keep the business running. She and Bep Voskuijl had not been arrested, and the office had not been cleared out by the Germans. They had also left the spice mills in the basement. Miep obtained permission from the bank to pay the salaries of personnel and bills from suppliers with her signature. ‘So in spite of the worst having come to pass, life went on at the Prinsengracht; orders for spices for sausage and pectin for jammaking kept coming, and we continued to fill them.'

Toward the end of September 1944, Johannes Kleiman suddenly returned. He had been released from the German prisoners' camp on account of his poor health. He immediately resumed the daily management of the company. The work simply carried on as usual. All that time, Anne Frank's diaries lay in Miep's desk drawer. After Mr. Kleiman's return, Miep and he walked to the office and home again together, every day. They no longer had bicycles and the days felt gray and desolate. Although the Germans were clearly losing the war, the hunger winter was yet to come. 'All conversations centered on food. Food obsessions were affecting all our minds. (...) Each day was just another day on the Prinsengracht, the long walk back to our River Quarter punctuated by feelings of faintness and waves of nausea, Jo Koophuis beside me. Always Jan and our cat waiting for me at home, or I for them. How to stretch two potatoes into a meal for two grown people and one cat?’

Exuberant joy among the people on the day of liberation. Source: website nostalgienet.nl
Exuberant joy among the people on the day of liberation. Source: website nostalgienet.nlIn the spring of 1945, the long-awaited liberation  finally came. People celebrated for days on end, people in hiding came out of hiding, and soon the refugees and Jews that had survived the horrors of the concentration camps returned to Amsterdam. Victor Kugler had survived the war and returned to the office. Jan Gies ran an aid center to assist those returning, and he asked everyone whether they knew the Frank family and what had happened to them, but to no avail. Finally, on June 3, 1945, he received a definitive answer: someone told him that Otto Frank was on his way back to Amsterdam. That same day Mr. Frank rang the bell of Jan and Miep's home. ‘We looked at each other. There were no words. He was thin, but he’d always been thin. He carried a little bundle. My eyes swam. My heart melted. Suddenly, I was afraid to know more. I didn’t want to know what had happened. I knew I would not ask.’ Click here to see a video excerpt in which Miep recounts seeing Otto Frank again.

Otto Frank was still standing in front of their door when he said: 'Miep, I have come to you because, of all  the people that are left, you and Jan are dearest to me.' He told them that his wife Edith would not be returning, ‘But I have great hope for Margot and Anne.' Otto Frank continued to stay with Miep and Jan, and he and Miep went to the office every day. Johannes Kleiman continued to work as company director. It was at the office on  Prinsengracht that Otto Frank read the letter informing him that Anne and Margot would also not be returning. He told Miep, who then opened her desk drawer and pulled out the packet of papers that Anne had written. No-one, not even Miep, had read them or even touched them. Now that she knew she could not return the papers to Anne, she gave them to Anne's father with the words, 'This is the legacy of your daughter Anne'. Otto Frank read the diary and after work, in the evening hours, he translated excerpts into German for his mother, living in Basel, Switzerland. Time and again he asked Miep to listen when wanted to read something out loud, but each time Miep refused. She was afraid for what she might hear and could not bring herself to listen to Anne's stories, read out by her father.

Proof that Otto Frank had returned to the Netherlands from Auschwitz and was staying with Miep and Jan Gies, first in Hunzestraat and later in Jekerstraat
Proof that Otto Frank had returned to the Netherlands from Auschwitz and was staying with Miep and Jan Gies, first in Hunzestraat and later in JekerstraatAfter some time, Jan, Miep and Otto left the rooms that they rented from Mrs. Stoppelman in Hunzestraat, moving in with Jan's sister Fenna who lived just a bit further up the street. ‘All of us were weak, depleted, slow-blooded. I had no reserve of energy anymore, but fortunately, I no longer needed great strength and energy. None of us was much for conversation, but our common memories kept us bonded together.' Otto Frank had asked Miep to start calling him Otto instead of Mr. Frank, but she only did so at home, at the office it continued to be Mr. Frank.

Across the country, efforts to rebuild were gradually getting underway, shattered buildings and infrastructure were renewed, and the shops slowly started carrying products again. Before they went into hiding, Otto and Edith Frank had stored a large part of their antique furniture and other possessions with friends. These could now be taken back and Otto Frank gave everything to Miep and Jan. ‘Edith would have been happy to know that you are using these things.' When two new bicycles arrived from England for Otto Frank, one was for himself and the other was for Miep. She was happy to accept the gift, as she had never had a new bicycle before.

Although the five-year German occupation had ended and rebuilding efforts had gotten underway, daily life remained a struggle. Shops remained empty, there was a serious shortage of housing, and the world in general was divided into 'right' and 'wrong', especially by the Dutch. In early 1947 Miep, Jan and Otto moved again, now to Jekerstraat 65, where they moved in with a friend of Jan's who had recently become a widower. Although Otto Frank had many friends and contacts and could also have started living or staying elsewhere, he preferred to stay with Jan and Miep. 'I prefer staying with you, Miep, he explained. That way I can talk to you about my family if I want.'

Diary of Anne Frank. Source: website entoen.nu
Diary of Anne Frank. Source: website entoen.nuEvery Sunday he had a group of Jewish friends over for coffee, who had also lost most of their family in the concentration camps. Otto Frank told these people about Anne's diary, and one of them asked if he might read it. Frank hesitated for a long time, but finally he showed him some of the excerpts that he had translated for his mother. This person was so touched by what he read that he asked if he might not read everything. With some reluctance, Frank agreed.  The man then asked if he could lend the diary to the historian Jan Romein to read, a good friend of his. Again Otto Frank hesitated, but was finally persuaded. Jan Romein was also much impressed by the diary, and he wrote an article about it for the daily newspaper Het Parool. He also asked Otto Frank to consider having the diary published. Their arguments as to the historic significance of Anne's diary ultimately outweighed the violation of Anne's privacy, which would be the inevitable result of publication. With great reluctance, Otto Frank agreed to the publication by the Contact publishing house in Amsterdam. That first tentative publication was the first of many, and it is currently estimated that some 25 million people around the world have read the diary. Yet when the first print appeared in 1947, neither Miep nor Jan wanted to read it. ‘Always Otto would tell me, “Miep, you must read it.” But always I couldn’t. I couldn’t relive the miseries, and I wouldn’t rekindle the terrible losses.'

Shortly after the first edition, a second edition was printed in that same year and after that had sold out, a third edition was prepared. Miep finally let herself by persuaded by Otto, and on a summer's day in 1947 she took the second edition of the diary to her room, closed the door behind her, and started to read. ‘I read the whole diray without stopping. From the first word, I heard Anne’s voice come back to speak to me from where she had gone. I lost track of time. Anne’s voice tumbled out of the book, so full of life, moods, curiosity, feelings. She was no longer gone and destroyed. She was alive again in my mind.'

After the diary's publication, Otto Frank acquired a full day's work in terms of all the associated tasks, and he gradually started working less and less for the company. Miep also resigned, in the summer of 1947. She was now living with three men in the house, so that running the household became something of a full-time job that cost a lot of energy. In 1948, Princess Juliana succeeded her mother as Queen of the Netherlands, and Jan Gies won a prize in a lottery. They spent the money on a holiday to Switzerland, and Otto Frank came along. He would be seeing his mother again, who lived in Basel, for the first time since the war. In 1949, the now forty-year old Miep turned out to be pregnant, and their son Paul was born on July 13, 1950. Life had returned to normal, there were plenty of groceries available, and everything was once again in working order.

Miep Gies with son Paul, Otto Frank and Jan, January 1951, in Amsterdam
Miep Gies with son Paul, Otto Frank and Jan, January 1951, in Amsterdam
After having lived with Miep and Jan for seven years, in the fall of 1952 Otto Frank emigrated to Switzerland, in order to be close to his mother. In November 1953 he remarried, with a woman who had also lost most of her loved ones in the concentration camps. Until his death in 1980, Otto Frank telephoned Jan and Miep every year on their wedding day on July 16. They also regularly visited him in Switzerland.

The Gies family visiting Otto Frank in Basel (Switzerland), summer of 1964
The Gies family visiting Otto Frank in Basel (Switzerland), summer of 1964



    While millions of people all over the world know about Anne Frank, far fewer are aware of Miep Gies, the woman who sustained Frank and her family in hiding during World War II. The humanitarian actions of Gies more than fifty years ago in Nazi-occupied Leiden have had a special and enduring impact. Were it not for Miep Gies, the world would never have met Anne Frank.

    Moral courage and modesty are at the heart of Miep’s character. For more than two years, she risked her own life daily to illegally protect and care for the Franks and four of their friends hiding from the Nazis in an attic. Miep insists that she is not a hero. “I myself am just an ordinary woman. I simply had no choice,” she told a standing-room-only audience during the fifth Wallenberg Lecture, in Rackham Auditorium, on October 11, 1994. Gies knew of many other Dutch people who sheltered or helped Jews during the war. Her name has become known, she said, only “because I had an Anne.” Gies assigned the title of hero to the eight souls who hid in the attic. “They were the brave people,” she said.

    Gies was born in 1909 in Vienna. At the age of eleven, recovering from tuberculosis and suffering from poor nutrition, she was sent to live with a family in Amsterdam. Her Dutch foster parents already had five children. Despite their modest income they welcomed her into their family, sharing with her everything they had. The love and compassion she received from her new family impressed Miep profoundly and she decided to make Holland her permanent home. Miep was influenced by the values of her foster family. Later, when her employer, Otto Frank, asked her if she was prepared to take responsibility for his family in hiding, she answered “yes” without hesitation. “It is our human duty to help those who are in trouble,” Miep said in Ann Arbor. “I could foresee many, many sleepless nights and a miserable life if I had refused to help the Franks. Yes, I have wept countless times when I thought of my dear friends. But still, I am happy that these are not tears of remorse for refusing to assist those in trouble.”

    Miep provided the Franks with food, clothing, and books during their years in hiding — to the best of her ability she addressed all of their daily material needs. She was also one of the few links with the outside world for the Franks and their friends, and she was their main source of hope and cheer. She knowingly faced great personal risk, acting out of integrity and in consonance with her own internal values. Miep tried to rescue the Frank family after they were taken from the attic, attempting to bribe the Austrian SS officer who had arrested them. Miep even went to Nazi headquarters to negotiate a deal, fully aware that this bold move could cost her life.  

    After the Franks were betrayed and arrested, Miep’s task continued. She climbed the attic stairs one more time to retrieve Anne’s writings, finding them scattered on the floor. Miep quickly gathered up the notebooks and kept them for Anne’s expected return after the war. When she learned of Anne’s death in Bergen-Belsen, Miep gave Otto Frank his daughter’s notebooks. Ever since, Miep has mourned the cruel fate of her friends in the attic. “Every year on the fourth of August, I close the curtains of my home and do not answer the doorbell or the telephone,” she said. “It is the day that my Jewish friends were taken away to the death camps. I have never overcome that shock.”

    Miep’s message in her Wallenberg Lecture was one of hope: “I feel strongly that we should not wait for our political leaders to make this world a better place.” Miep Gies has been honored around the world for her moral courage. In Israel the Yad Vashem Memorial pays tribute to her as a Righteous Gentile.

    Miep Gies died at age 100 in the Netherlands on January 11, 2010.

Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
1
ANNE FRANK
A HISTORY FOR TODAY
"Writing in a diary is a really strange
experience for someone like me. Not
only because I've never written
anything before, but also because it
seems to me that later on neither I
nor anyone else will be interested in
the musings of a thirteen-year-old
schoolgirl."
(Anne Frank)
On her thirteenth birthday Anne
Frank is given a diary. Just a few
weeks later her life is turned upside
down when she has to go into hiding.
For over two years she will keep a
record of her thoughts, feelings and
experiences in her diary. She has no
way of knowing that in the future
this diary will be read by millions of
people all over the world.
Anne FrankExhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
2
"I was born on 12 June 1929."
"My father, the most adorable father
I've ever seen, didn't marry my
mother until he was thirty-six and
she was twenty-five. My sister
Margot was born in Frankfurt am
Main in Germany in 1926. I was born
on 12 June 1929."
(Anne Frank)
Anne Frank is the second daughter of
Otto Frank and Edith FrankHolländer. The Frank and Holländer
families have lived in Germany for
generations. The Frank family are
liberal Jews. They feel a bond with
the Jewish faith, but they are not
strictly observant.
In 1930 around 1% of the German
population, more than half a million
people, are Jewish.
1. Anne's parents' wedding, 12 May
1925.
2. Anne's father (left) and her uncle
Robert as German officers during the
First World War (1914 - 1918).
3. Anne's grandmother Frank as a
nurse in a military hospital during
the First World War.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
3
Crisis in Germany
The First World War ends in 1918
with Germany's defeat. The Treaty of
Versailles drawn up at the end of the
war imposes harsh reparations on
Germany. Millions of people lose
their jobs and are thrown into
desperate poverty. Inflation is out of
control: by 1923 the currency is
practically worthless. Many Germans
feel bitterly resentful. In 1929 the
world is plunged into economic
crisis, and Germany is especially hard
hit. The NSDAP (National Socialist
German Workers Party), a small
extremist nationalist political party
led by Adolf Hitler, blames the Jews
for all of Germany's and the world's
problems. Hitler also claims to have
the solution to the problems of
unemployment and poverty.
1. A demonstration against the
Treaty of Versailles at the Reichstag
in Berlin in 1932.
2. Collecting money for povertystricken children in Berlin, 1920.
3. Children playing with a pile of
worthless banknotes, 1923.
4. Hitler on the day of the annual
party rally in Nuremberg, 1927. He
repeatedly claims that the Jews are
to blame for Germany’s problems.
5. Hitler attracts a growing following.
In 1930, 18.3% of Germans vote for
the Nazi party (NSDAP).Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
4
"I lived in Frankfurt until I was
four." (Anne Frank)
"As early as 1932, groups of
Stormtrooper (Brownshirts) came
marching by singing: 'When Jewish
blood splatters off the knife'. . . I
immediately discussed it with my
wife: 'How can we leave here?' ".
(Otto Frank)
Otto and Edith are deeply worried
about the future. The Nazis are
growing in strength and brutality.
What is more, the economic crisis
means that things are going from
bad to worse at the bank where Otto
works. Otto and Edith want to get
away, and wonder if there is another
country where they could start a
new life. Margot and Anne know
nothing of their parents' worries.
1. Anne, Margot and their father,
1930.
2. In October 1933, Anne and Margot
stayed with their grandmother
Holländer in Aachen (Germany), near
the Dutch border.
3. Anne, July 1933.
4. Margot Frank in 1929. She was
three years old when her sister Anne
was born.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
5
Hitler wins the elections
By 1932, almost 6 million Germans
are unemployed. More and more
Germans are attracted to radical
anti-democratic parties. Both
Communists and National Socialists
claim to have the one and only
solution to all of society's problems.
Political differences are often fought
out on the streets. The NSDAP
exploit this violence to their own
advantage, and at the November
1932 elections they become the
largest party in parliament, with
33.1% of the vote.
1. 'Hitler: Our Last Hope'
NSDAP election poster, 1932.
2. A poor neighbourhood in Berlin in
1932. Communists and National
Socialists live in the same street. On
the wall is written: "Our children are
wasting away here".
3. Hitler is shown ringed by avid
admirers in this photo from 1932.
4. The Nazis still have many
opponents in 1932. This is an antiNSDAP demonstration.
5. Unemployed people lining up
outside the employment office in
Hannover. The words on the fence
read: ‘Vote for Hitler’.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
6
"…the world around me
collapsed…"
"…the world around me collapsed. . .
I had to face the consequences and
though this did hurt me deeply I
realized that Germany was not the
world and I left forever."
(Otto Frank)
On 30 January 1933 Hitler becomes
Chancellor of Germany.
The new rulers soon make their true
intentions clear. The first anti-Jewish
laws are introduced, and the
persecution of the Jews in Germany
begins in earnest.
For Otto Frank, the time has come to
leave Germany. He tries to find work
in the Netherlands, where he has
business contacts. He succeeds in his
search, and the Frank family
emigrates to Amsterdam.
1. While Otto makes preparations for
the emigration, Anne and Margot
stay with their mother at their
grandmother Holländer's house in
Aachen (Germany).
2. Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor
on 30 January 1933.
3. Nazi violence against the Jews is
widely reported in the international
media, but the Nazis claim this is
nothing but Jewish propaganda. On 1
April 1933 they begin a boycott of
Jewish lawyers, doctors, shops and
department stores.
4. Anne, Edith and Margot Frank, 10
March 1933. Tietz department store
in Frankfurt (Germany) had a
Photoweigh photo booth where you
could weigh yourself and have your
passport photo taken.He repeatedly
claims that the Jews are to blame for
Germany’s problems.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
7
Dictatorship
The NSDAP does not only terrorise
the Jews, but also its political
opponents. Communists and Social
Democrats in particular are
persecuted and confined to
concentration camps. Certain types
of art, literature and music are
banned, and books are burned in the
streets. Many writers, artists and
scientists flee abroad. Democracy is
abolished. Jewish civil servants and
teachers are dismissed.
1. An NSDAP torchlight march
through Berlin, 1933.
2. On 23 March 1933, Parliament
votes to allow Hitler to rule without
democratic consent. Only the Social
Democrats, those who have not
already been arrested or fled, vote
against. The Communist Party has
already been banned.
3. A public book-burning in May
1933. The authors, many of them
Jewish, are branded 'un-German'.
4. 'Führer, we follow you! Everyone
says Yes!'
In mid-1933 all political parties are
banned. The only party permitted is
the NSDAP.
5. Political opponents are rounded
up, March 1933.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
8
"To Holland"
"Because we're Jewish, my father
emigrated to Holland in 1933, when
he became the Managing Director of
the Dutch Opekta Company, which
manufactures products used in
making jam." (Anne Frank)
Otto Frank begins to build up his
business selling 'Opekta', a gelling
agent for jam. The Frank family move
into a house on the Merwedeplein
square, part of a new housing
development in Amsterdam. More
and more refugees from Germany
come to live in the neighbourhood.
Anne and Margot go to a local school
and quickly learn Dutch.
1. Anne at school, 1935.
2. Otto Frank and his secretary Miep
Gies, who began working for him in
1933.
3. Anne with her friends Eva
Goldberg (on the left) and Sanne
Ledermann (in the middle) at the
Merwerdeplein (Amsterdam), 1936.
4. Margot and Anne with their
friends Ellen Weinberger (second
from the left) and Gabrielle Kahn (on
the right). The photo was taken at
the home of the Kahn family in
Amsterdam, 1934.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
9
The Nazification of Germany
In Germany, 'law and order' have
returned, and the economy is on the
upturn. The Nazis take control of the
upbringing and education of young
people, with the aim of turning them
into 'good Nazis'. The media (radio,
newspapers and film) only reflect
Nazi ideology.
There is great enthusiasm for Hitler
and his party. There are some
opponents too, but most of them
remain silent for fear of violence and
imprisonment. A variety of antiJewish measures are introduced.
There is little resistance.
1. Rigidly organized mass rallies
make a big impression. A
demonstration against the Treaty of
Versailles at the Reichstag in Berlin in
1932.
2. The unemployed are put to work
on the construction of highways,
government buildings and civil
projects. Hitler also begins to build
up a weapons industry and a large
army. Unemployment falls
dramatically.
3. Young and old alike are full of
enthusiasm for the Nazis.
4. 'Youth Serves the Führer'
'All ten-year-olds in the Hitler Youth'
5. The Nazis want complete control
of young people's upbringing. Boys'
activities take on a military flavour,
while girls are prepared for their
roles as housewives and mothers.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
10
"There goes Anne, Hanne and
Sanne"
"Hanneli and Sanne used to be my
two best friends. People who saw us
together used to say, 'There goes
Anne, Hanne and Sanne.'" (Anne
Frank)
Hannah Goslar and Sanne Lederman
are both Jewish, and both of them
come from Berlin. The stream of
refugees keeps growing, and more
and more people who have fled
Germany come to live in Anne's
neighbourhood. Around half of the
children in Anne's class are Jewish.
1. Anne with her friends in a sandpit,
1937. Hannah is on the left, Sanne
on the right.
2. Anne, 1935, 1936, 1937.
Margot, 1935, 1936, 1937.
3. Anne at a summer camp for city
children in Laren near Amsterdam in
1937.
4. There are many Jewish children in
Anne's class, most of them from
Germany.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
11
Race Laws
In 1935, 'race laws' are introduced. Only
Germans with so-called 'German blood'
can be full citizens from now on. All
others have fewer rights.
Hitler's ideal is a 'racially pure' German
people. According to him, the German
'Aryan race' is superior to all others. The
Nazis see the Jews not only as inferior,
but also as dangerous. They harbour the
delusion that 'the Jews' are engaged in a
worldwide conspiracy to destroy the socalled 'Aryan race'.
Jewish people face mounting restrictions,
and all to one purpose: to isolate the
Jews from the non-Jewish population.
1. The Nazis believe that people can be
divided into 'races', and that their own
'Aryan race' is superior. Here, a child is
being examined for 'racial traits'.
2. Schoolchildren are given lessons in
‘racial studies’.
3. Hitler issues an order to kill disabled
people in order to prevent the
'weakening of the race'. Some 80,000
disabled people, this girl among them,
are murdered.
4. The Nazis also consider black people
'inferior'. There are around 20,000 black
people living in Germany in the 1930's. In
1937, 385 black children are secretly
sterilised.
5. Thirty-nine Roma ('Gypsy') children are
brought to the 'St. Josefspflege' clinic in
the German town of Mulfingen for socalled 'racial studies'. In 1944 the
children are sent to Auschwitz, where
most of them are killed in the gas
chambers, while others are forced to
undergo medical experiments. Only four
surviveExhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
12
"Our lives were not without anxiety.
. ."
"Our lives were not without anxiety,
since our relatives in Germany were
suffering under Hitler's anti-Jewish
laws. After the pogroms in 1938 my
two uncles (my mother's brothers)
fled Germany, finding safe refuge in
North America. My elderly
grandmother came to live with us.
She was seventy-three years old at
the time." (Anne Frank)
Otto and Edith Frank get to know
other German refugees. They meet
Hermann and Auguste van Pels and
their son Peter, and Fritz Pfeffer, all
of whom will later go into hiding
with them. The Van Pels family fled
from Osnabrück in 1937, and
Hermann van Pels became a partner
in Otto Frank's business. Like Anne's
uncles, Fritz Pfeffer left Germany
following 'Kristallnacht'.
1. Anne (second from the left) in the
Vondelpark in Amsterdam, in the
winter of 1940/1941. Figure-skating
was her great passion. This is the
only photo of Anne skating that has
survived. A demonstration against
the Treaty of Versailles at the
Reichstag in Berlin in 1932.
2. Anne's Grandmother Holländer
leaves for Amsterdam in March 1939
and comes to live with the Frank
family. She dies in 1942.
3. Peter van Pels (centre) with
friends at the Jewish Boy Scouts in
Osnabrück, Germany, in 1936.
4. Fritz Pfeffer with his non-Jewish
fiancée Charlotte Kaletta.
In Germany, marriages between
Jews and non-Jews have been illegal
since 1935. They cannot marry in the
Netherlands either, because it
respects German law.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
13
The persecution of the Jews
begins
On the night of 9-10 November
1938 (the so-called 'Kristallnacht',
or Night of Broken Glass) the
Nazis organise a series of attacks
against the Jews. In this one night
of violence 177 synagogues are
destroyed, 7500 shops wrecked
and 236 Jews murdered. Around
30,000 are arrested and sent to
concentration camps.
Only now does the true scale of
the danger they are in become
apparent, and many Jews decide
to flee Germany, but more and
more countries are closing their
borders to refugees.
1. Jewish refugees on board the
'St. Louis' in the harbour at
Antwerp, Belgium, 17 June 1939.
2. Passers-by at a vandalised shop
on the Potsdamer Strasse in
Berlin on the morning of 10
November 1938. The term
'Kristallnacht' refers to the
broken glass that litters the
streets.
3. Jews in Oldenburg, Germany,
under arrest after 'Kristallnacht'.
4. Hitler on the day of the annual
party rally in Nuremberg, 1927.
He repeatedly claims that the
Jews are to blame for Germany’s
problems.
5. A Frankfurt synagogue in
flames during 'Kristallnacht', 9-10
November 1938.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
14
War!
On 1 September 1939 the German
army invades Poland. Large areas are
cleared by the army to make way for
settlement by German colonists.
Many prominent Poles are killed.
Little news of the atrocities being
carried out in Poland filters through
to Western Europe.
In May 1940 the Netherlands,
Belgium and France are also invaded
by the German army. The Nazis see
the non-Jewish people of these
countries, in contrast to the Poles, as
members of the same 'race', and do
not commit atrocities on the scale of
those in Poland.
The registration of Jews begins in the
first year of the occupation of the
Netherlands.
1. In September 1939 the Second
World War breaks out.
2. Behind the front line in Poland the
campaign of terror against the Jews
begins immediately. Jews are
publicly humiliated and beaten up in
the streets. The occupying forces
carry out pogroms in which
thousands of Jews are killed.
3. The arrival of the German army in
Amsterdam, near to Otto Frank's
business, 16 May 1940.
4. At first the Nazis attempt to win
over the Dutch people to their ideas,
but with little success. Only a small
proportion of the population
collaborate with the occupiers.
5. Warsaw, 14 September 1939.
Polish children look anxiously to the
sky as German aircraft attack the
city. In 1930, 18.3% of Germans vote
for the Nazi party (NSDAP).Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
15
"…the trouble started for the Jews."
"After May 1940 the good times
were few and far between: first
there was the war, then the
capitulation and then the arrival of
the Germans, which is when the
trouble started for the Jews." (Anne
Frank)
The Second World War breaks out a
few months after Anne's tenth
birthday. Otto and Edith hope that
the Netherlands will stay out of the
war, but on 10 May 1940 the
German army invades. The Nazis
quickly begin the process of
identifying who is Jewish and who is
not. After a year, the names and
addresses of the majority of Jews in
the Netherlands are known to the
occupiers.
1. The Frank family on the
Merwedeplein square in Amsterdam.
2. Anne (third from the right), her
father (third from the left) and other
guests at the wedding of Jan Gies
and Miep Santrouschitz in
Amsterdam on 16 July 1941.
3. Dutch Nazis marching through the
Jewish quarter of Amsterdam. They
often provoke violence with the
Jews.
4. Hitler on the day of the annual
party rally in Nuremberg, 1927. He
repeatedly claims that the Jews are
to blame for Germany’s problems.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
16
Isolation
Once the names and addresses of
the Jews are known, their isolation
can begin. The Nazis introduce a fastgrowing array of anti-Jewish
measures, with the effect that many
non-Jews no longer dare to associate
with Jews, or vice versa.
1. In Germany and in most of the
occupied territories Jews are forced
to wear a yellow star.
2. The first major open conflict
between the occupying forces and
the Dutch people comes in February
1941, after 427 Jewish men are
rounded up and deported to the
Mauthausen concentration camp.
The people of Amsterdam and the
surrounding area go on strike in
protest against the persecution of
the Jews, but the strike is violently
broken up after two days.
3. By order of the occupiers, signs
appear with the message 'Jews Not
Allowed' or 'Jews Not Welcome
Here'.
4. In Eastern Europe special army
units, 'Einsatzgruppen', have the task
of killing as many Jews, 'Gypsies', and
partisans as possible. In just one year
an estimated one million men,
women and children are murdered.
5. In the Netherlands, from 3 May
1942, all Jewish children over six
years old have to wear a yellow star.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
17
"…a series of anti-Jewish decrees…"
"Our freedom was severely restricted by
a series of anti-Jewish decrees: Jews
were required to wear a yellow star;
Jews were required to turn in their
bicycles; Jews were forbidden to use
trams; Jews were forbidden to ride in
cars, even their own; Jews were required
to do their shopping between 3.00 and
5.00 p.m.; Jews were required to
frequent only Jewish-owned barbershops
and beauty salons; Jews were forbidden
to be out on the streets between 8.00
p.m. and 6.00 a.m." (Anne Frank)
Jewish children now have to go to
separate Jewish schools, in Anne and
Margot's case the Jewish Lyceum.
Because Jews are no longer allowed to
have their own businesses, Otto Frank
names Johannes Kleiman as company
director, although Otto remains active
behind the scenes. The company is also
given a new name, Gies & Co, after Jan
Gies, the husband of Miep Gies.
1. Anne at the Montessori school in
Amsterdam, 1941.
A secret plan
Behind all the anti-Jewish measures lies
Hitler's secret plan: all 11 million Jews in
Europe are to be killed. This decision is
worked out in detail by high-ranking Nazi
officials at a top-secret meeting at a villa
in Berlin in January 1942: the so-called
'Wannsee Conference'.
The Jews must suspect nothing. They are
told they are being sent to ‘labour
camps’. In reality they are transported to
specially constructed extermination
camps, most of them in Poland, which
have been specifically designed for the
rapid and ‘efficient’ killing and cremation
of as many human beings as possible.
Large-scale deportations to these camps
begin in the summer of 1942. Most of
the Jews who are sent there are killed
immediately on their arrival. The
remainder are forced into grueling slave
labour until they die of
2. At the Wannsee Conference a
calculation is made of the number of
Jews living in Europe.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
18
"I hope I will be able to confide
everything to you. . ."
"I hope I will be able to confide
everything to you, as I have never
been able to confide in anyone, and I
hope you will be a great source of
comfort and support." (Anne Frank)
Anne writes these words on the first
page of the diary which she is given
for her thirteenth birthday on 12
June 1942. She writes the diary in
the form of letters to her imaginary
friend Kitty about school, her friends
and her life up to that point. She
cannot foresee that three weeks
later her life will change completely.
1. Anne's diary
2. Anne Frank 1935-1942
3. Anne’s diary. On some pages she
would paste passport photos of
herself and comment on them.
4. Anne switches between two kinds
of handwriting in her diary.
Sometimes she writes in block
letters, but she often also uses a
flowing, slanted script.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
19
"I was stunned. A call-up. . ."
“At three o’ clock. . . the doorbell
rang. I didn’t hear it, since I was out
on the balcony, lazily reading in the
sun. A little while later Margot
appeared in the kitchen doorway
looking very agitated. ‘Father has
received a call-up notice from the
SS’, she whispered. . . I was stunned.
A call-up: everyone knows what that
means. Visions of concentration
camps and lonely cells raced through
my head.” (Anne Frank)
Three weeks after Anne's birthday,
on 5 July 1942, a call-up notice
arrives for Margot to report to the
authorities. She is to be sent to a
'labour camp' in Germany. The callup does not come as a complete
surprise to Anne's parents: since
early 1942 Otto Frank has already
been making preparations to go into
hiding in the '', a part of his offices
on the Prinsengracht. Only his most
trusted employees know of these
plans. The decision is made to go
into hiding immediately.
1. Margot Frank at the Jewish
Lyceum, December 1941.
2. A passport photo of Anne, May
1942. Probably the last photo that
was taken of her.
3. A call-up notice, with a list of the
items the deportees must take with
them.
4. The Frank family decide to go into
hiding the very next day. Miep Gies
and other helpers come the same
evening to bring as many items as
possible to the hiding place. Jews are
to blame for Germany’s problems.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
20
"…an ideal place to hide in."
"The Annexe is an ideal place to hide
in. It may be damp and lopsided, but
there's probably not a more
comfortable hiding place in all of
Amsterdam. No, in all of Holland."
(Anne Frank)
The hiding place is in an empty part
of Otto Frank's offices. Later, the Van
Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer join the
Franks there. For the next two years
these eight people remain in the ,
cut off from the outside world. It is a
time full of fear and tension, but also
of arguments or stifling boredom.
Four of Otto Frank's trusted
employees keep the eight people in
hiding supplied with food, clothes
and books.
1. The building on the Prinsengracht.
The hiding place, the ‘Secret
Annexe’, is at the rear.
2. The inhabitants
Otto Frank
Edith Frank
Margot Frank
Anne Frank
Hermann van Pels
Auguste van Pels
Peter van Pels
Fritz Pfeffer
3. The helpers.
Miep Gies
Johannes Kleiman
Victor Kugler
Bep VoskuijlExhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
21
". . . I'm terrified our hiding place will be
discovered and that we'll be shot."
"Not being able to go outside upsets me
more than I can say, and I'm terrified our
hiding place will be discovered and that
we'll be shot." (Anne Frank)
During the day, while people are at work
in the building, the inhabitants have to
remain very quiet. The warehouse
employees have no idea they are there.
Because the waste pipe from the toilet
runs alongside the warehouse, it must be
flushed as infrequently as possible. All
the windows are blacked out with
blankets so that the neighbours cannot
see in, and the door which leads to the is
hidden behind a hinged bookcase. During
these long, silent hours Anne reads her
schoolbooks, plays games with the
others and writes in her diary.
1. The building at Prinsengracht 263. At
the rear, shown here shaded in red, is
the hiding place in the Secret Annexe.
The Secret Annexe
1. Bookcase.
2. Anne and Fritz Pfeffer's room.
3. Otto, Edith and Margot's room.
4. Hermann and Auguste van Pels's
room, also used as dining room.
5. Peter van Pels's room.
6. Bathroom and toilet.
7. Storage attic.
The business premises
8. Warehouse.
9. Office where the helpers work.
10. Office storeroom.
2. A hinged bookcase conceals the
entrance to the .
3. Anne and Fritz Pfeffer's room. Anne
has decorated the walls with photos.
Some years ago, for the making of a film,
the was temporarily fitted out as it must
have looked while the people were in
hiding.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
22
"All are marched to their death"
"It's impossible to escape their
clutches unless you go into hiding.
No one is spared. The sick, the
elderly, children, babies and
pregnant women - all are marched to
their death." (Anne Frank)
The inhabitants receive news from
the outside world that Jews are
being hunted down. They feel
anxious and powerless. On the radio
they hear about gassings. Anne
sometimes finds the pressure
unbearable. She is often rebellious
and rude to the others, and
frequently gloomy and depressed.
There are many things which she
feels she cannot talk about properly
with the others. Her diary is her best
friend.
1. Almost every day Anne writes
about her thoughts, feelings and
experiences. This diary is already full
after a few months. She continues to
write in notebooks which she is given
by Bep.
2. The deportation of Amsterdam
Jews, summer 1943. Anne gets to
hear that friends and classmates
have been arrested. At first the
helpers still pass on news of what is
happening in the outside world to
the Secret Annexe inhabitants, but
later they stop.
3. The helpers try to keep up the
spirits of the inhabitants . They bring
them food, books, newspapers and
magazines. Anne especially likes the
magazine 'Cinema and Theatre'.
4. Otto, Edith and Margot's room.
Anne usually spends her days in this
room, because the small room is
occupied by Fritz Pfeffer.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
23
"…will I ever become a journalist or
a writer?"
"…will I ever become a journalist or a
writer? I hope so, oh, I hope so very
much, because writing allows me to
record everything, all my thoughts,
ideals and fantasies." (Anne Frank)
Anne has discovered a talent and a
love for writing. On 28 March 1944
she hears in a radio broadcast from
London that the Dutch government
will be making a collection of
people's diaries after the war. She
decides to re-write her diary in the
hope that it will later be published as
a book. She has even thought of a
title: ‘The ’.
Hopes of liberation are raised in the
by the news that the Allies have
landed in Normandy and are
advancing.
1. Anne begins to re-write her diary
on loose sheets of paper.
2. Anne also writes short stories, and
sometimes reads them to the others.
3. Anne feels she is falling in love
with Peter van Pels.
4. Anne and Peter spend hours
together in Peter's room.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
24
"I hear the approaching thunder. . ."
"It's difficult in times like these:
ideals, dreams and cherished hopes
rise within us, only to be crushed by
grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't
abandoned all my ideals, they seem
so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling
to them because I still believe, in
spite of everything, that people are
truly good at heart. It's utterly
impossible for me to build my life on
a foundation of chaos, suffering and
death. I see the world being slowly
transformed into a wilderness, I hear
the approaching thunder that, one
day, will destroy us too, I feel the
suffering of millions. And yet, when I
look up at the sky, I somehow feel
that everything will change for the
better, that this cruelty too will end,
that peace and tranquility will return
once more. In the meantime, I must
hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the
day will come when I'll be able to
realise them!" (Anne Frank) [15 July
1944]
On 1 August 1944 Anne writes the
final entry in her diary. Three days
later, on 4 August 1944, the moment
that everyone in the has been
dreading arrives.
1. Anne often spends time alone in
the attic, struggling to come to terms
with her own feelings and events in
the world around her.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
25
The betrayal
On Friday 4 August 1944, a car pulls
up in front of the building on the
Prinsengracht. A group of armed
men step out and enter the
warehouse. Someone has called the
police to say there are Jews here.
Karl Josef Silberbauer, an Austrian
Nazi, is in command. The others are
Dutch police officers. The inhabitants
are taken completely by surprise.
They are given just enough time to
pack their bags. Silberbauer grabs a
briefcase and shakes out the
contents so he can use it to take
away money and jewelry. Anne's
diary papers fall out onto the floor.
Then Anne and the others are taken
away to the local prison.
1. Karl Josef Silberbauer, the SS
officer who led the arrest. Nineteen
years later, in 1963, he is tracked
down in Vienna, where he is working
as a police officer. He is suspended,
but later reinstated after making a
statement that he does not know
who the informant was. To this day it
remains unclear who betrayed the
inhabitants.
2. Anne and the others are first
brought to Gestapo headquarters.
Four days later they are taken by
train to the transit camp at
Westerbork in the Dutch province of
Drenthe.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
26
"…we knew what was happening"
"We were together again, and had been
given a little food for the journey. In our
hearts, of course, we were already
anticipating the possibility that we might
not remain in Westerbork to the end. We
knew about deportation to Poland, after
all. And we also knew what was
happening in Auschwitz, Treblinka and
Maidenek. But then, were not the
Russians already deep in Poland? The
war was so far advanced that we could
begin to place a little hope in luck. As we
rode toward Westerbork we were hoping
that our luck would hold. (Otto Frank)
Thousands of people are being held in
Westerbork. The inhabitants are put in
special punishment blocks, because they
had not voluntarily reported for
deportation. They receive especially
harsh treatment from their guards, and
are forced to carry out hard labour.
Trains crammed with Jewish people
leave regularly for the East. After four
weeks, Anne and the others from the are
also taken away, on the last train to leave
Westerbork for Auschwitz.
1. Nearly all of the Jews captured in the
Netherlands are first taken to the
Westerbork transit camp.
2. Anne Frank's record card from
Westerbork.
3. The train leaves on 3 September 1944,
with 1019 people on board. The lists of
deportees still exist today. Anne's name,
and those of the others from the Secret
Annexe, are on these pages.
4. A transport departs from Westerbork.
5. The deportees are locked into goods
trains, with around 70 people crammed
into each wagon. The journey lasts for
three days, with no space to lie down,
next to no food or drink, and just a single
bucket for a toilet.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
27
"I can no longer talk about. . ."
"I can no longer talk about how I felt
when my family, arrived on the train
platform in Auschwitz and we were
forcibly separated from each other."
(Otto Frank)
On the night of 6 September the
train arrives at Auschwitz. The
prisoners have to leave their
belongings behind in the train. On
the platform, the men and women
are separated. This is the last time
that Otto will ever see Edith, Margot
and Anne. Auschwitz is one of the
extermination camps which have
been specially constructed for the
purpose of killing human beings. The
old, the sick and children under 15
are gassed immediately on arrival, a
fate which befalls more than half the
people on Anne's train. The rest, the
inhabitants among them, survive this
selection and are taken to a labour
camp.
With the Russian army advancing,
the Nazis are beginning to evacuate
Auschwitz. After two months Anne
and Margot are moved to the
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
1. Men and women are separated
immediately on their arrival at
Auschwitz. After that the Nazis select
those who are to be gassed and
cremated directly. The rest must
carry out grueling forced labour.
2. Hungarian Jews, selected for the
gas chambers, on the platform at
Auschwitz.
3. Poison gas cylinders (Zyklon-B)
that are used in the gas chambers.
4. The prisoners who are not killed
immediately have a number tattooed
on their arms. Their heads are
shaved and they are given camp
uniforms.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
28
"It wasn't the same Anne."
"It wasn't the same Anne. She was a
broken girl. . . it was so terrible. She
immediately began to cry, and she
told me: `I don't have any parents
anymore.' I always think, if Anne had
known that her father was still alive,
she might have had more strength to
survive."
(Hannah Goslar, a friend of Anne)
In Bergen-Belsen Anne meets her
school friend Hannah Goslar, who is
being held in another part of the
camp. Then they become separated
by a fence of barbed wire and straw
and can no longer see each other.
Anne tells Hannah that she and
Margot are starving and have no
warm clothes. Hannah manages to
throw a package with some clothes
and a little food over the fence. But
Margot and Anna have no strength
left. They both contract typhus, and
in February 1945, within a few days
of each other, they die.
On 15 April 1945 Bergen-Belsen is
liberated by the British army.
1. Starvation, cold and disease claim
thousands of lives in the
overcrowded Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp.
2. The British soldiers who liberate
the camp are deeply shaken by what
they find. There are corpses lying
everywhere. They force the former
camp guards to bury the bodies.
3. After Westerbork and Auschwitz,
Anne and Margot reach their final
destination: Bergen-Belsen.
National borders in 1939. After the
war the borders of some countries
are redrawn.
4. A women’s barracks shortly after
the liberation of Bergen-Belsen.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
29
"My entire hope. . ."
"My entire hope lies with the children. I
cling to the conviction that they are alive
and that we'll be together again. Only
the children, only the children count."
(Otto Frank)
Otto Frank writes this in near-despair to
his mother in Basle after the liberation.
Otto has survived Auschwitz by sheer
chance. He is one of the few who are
found alive by the Russian soldiers. Once
he has regained a little strength he
begins the journey back to Amsterdam.
The journey takes four months, because
war is still raging in most parts of Europe,
and during this time he hears that his
wife Edith is dead. However, he knows
nothing of his children's fate, and he
clings to the hope that they are still alive.
Otto Frank is the only person from the
people in hiding to survive. He is
liberated from Auschwitz by the Russian
army on 27 January 1945.
Edith Frank dies of exhaustion in
Auschwitz on 6 January 1945.
Margot Frank dies of typhus in BergenBelsen at the end of March 1945.
Anne Frank dies of typhus in BergenBelsen a few days after Margot.
Hermann van Pels is gassed shortly after
his arrival in Auschwitz in October or
November 1944.
Auguste van Pels dies in April or May
1945 on the way to Theresienstadt
concentration camp.
Peter van Pels dies on 5 May 1945 in
Mauthausen concentration camp.
Fritz Pfeffer dies on 20 December 1944 in
Neuengamme concentration camp.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
30
". . . deaths of my children."
"Small groups kept returning from
the different concentration camps,
and over and over again I tried to
find out about Margot and Anne."
"I found two sisters who had been
with Margot and Anne in BergenBelsen, and they told me about the
final sufferings and deaths of my
children." (Otto Frank)
Otto is a broken man. Miep Gies,
who has kept Anne's diary safe all
this time, now gives it to Otto with
the words: "This is your daughter's
legacy."
1. Otto Frank shows the
concentration camp number
tattooed on his arm.
2. At first Otto is so overcome by
grief that he cannot bring himself to
read the diary. But later, when he
does begin to read it, he cannot stop.
"A completely different Anne from
the daughter I had lost appeared.
Such deep thoughts and feelings. . . I
had no idea. . ."
3. He types out part of the diary and
lets his family and a few friends read
it. They say that he must have it
published.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
31
"…to be a famous writer"
"…my greatest wish is to be a journalist,
and later on, a famous writer. In any
case, after the war I'd like to publish a
book called The Secret Annexe." (Anne
Frank)
1. Two years after the war, in June 1947,
Anne Frank's diary is published under the
title she had thought of herself: The
Secret Annexe.
The first edition sells out quickly and is
soon reprinted. Publishers from other
countries also begin to show an interest
in the diary.
In 1955 the diary is adapted into a stage
play, which is a phenomenal success. The
film version which is later made is also
seen in packed houses around the world.
The diary is translated into over 60
languages, some 30 million copies are
sold, and schools and streets are named
in honour of Anne Frank.
Millions of people read the diary, and
many of them want to see with their own
eyes the place where Anne wrote it.
2. Otto Frank in 1960, just before the
opening of the Anne Frank House. Otto
wants to do more than just open the
Secret Annexe to the public. He sets up
an educational foundation which brings
together young people from all over the
world. Otto Frank dies in 1980, aged 91.
© Arnold Newman
3. For many, Anne Frank has become a
symbol of the Holocaust: the systematic
murder of six million human beings.
4. "The diary demonstrates the immense
tragedy of the holocaust, the waste of
human lives and talent, and the price
that was paid because free people did
not act in time to suppress totalitarian
movements."
Yehuda LevExhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
32
GLOSSARY
ANTI-SEMITISM
Literally ‘against Semites’. Prejudice against or hatred of Jews. The Holocaust is history’s most extreme example of
anti-Semitism.
AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU
A concentration and extermination camp functioning between 1940 and 1945, near Oświęcim in Nazi-occupied
Poland. More than 1.1 million people lost their lives in Auschwitz-Birkenau, including approximately 1 million Jews,
75,000 Poles, 21,000 Sintis and Romas, and 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war. The camp was liberated on the 27th of
January of 1945 by the Red Army (Army of the Soviet Union).
BERGEN-BELSEN
A concentration camp in north-western Germany, originally established in 1940 for prisoners of war. Tens of
thousands of Jewish prisoners were evacuated from Auschwitz to other camps such as Bergen-Belsen in late 1944
and early 1945, leading to catastrophic overcrowding, starvation and a typhus epidemic. The camp was liberated by
the British army on the 15th of April of 1945.
CONCENTRATION CAMP
A prison camp in which inmates were often forced to do hard labor. Some well-known Nazi concentration camps
were Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Mauthausen. Most inmates were political opponents of the Nazis
or so called ‘a socials’ (such as homosexuals, beggars and habitual criminals).
D-DAY
On 6 June 1944, the allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy in order to liberate the occupied countries in
Europe. This day is called Decision Day, or D-Day.
DISCRIMINATION
Discrimination is unjustified, unfair and unequal treatment. It is against the law. Discrimination based on race,
ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, religion, nationality, or marital status is illegal in several countries.
EXTERMINATION CAMP
Also known as death camps, the Nazi camp set up specifically for the mass murder of Jews, primarily by poison gas.
Four camps were created in occupied Poland in 1941-42 which existed solely for the murder of Jews: Bełżec,
Chełmno, Sobibór and Treblinka. Two concentration camps were extended with extermination functions: Majdanek
in 1941, and Auschwitz-Birkenau in the spring of 1942.
FIRST WORLD WAR
The First World War was a world war that took place mainly in Europe; it started on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11
November 1918. 15 million people were killed.
GESTAPO
Geheime Staatspolizei: the Nazi secret state police.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
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GHETTO
A selected section of a town or city where Jews were forced to live in separation from non-Jewish people. We can
find examples of ghettos in Europe already in the Middle Ages. During the Second World War the Nazis and their
collaborators surrounded the ghettos by walls that undermined any leaving attempts. These territories were
characterized by overcrowding, dire hygienic circumstances, famine, diseases, and epidemics.
HITLERJUGEND (HITLER YOUTH)
It was a National-Socialist youth movement in Germany. The Bund Deutscher Mädel, an organization for girls, was
part of the Hitlerjugend.
HOLOCAUST
The Holocaust as a term comes from the Greek word holókaustos, its meaning is: burnt whole. The Hebrew (a
language spoken by Jews) term for the holocaust is Shoah, which can be translated as: catastrophe. The most often
known context of the term today regards the directed genocide conducted under the rule of Nazi Germany during
the Second World War and causing 6 million Jewish victims across Europe.
KILLINGS SQUADS (EINSATZGRUPPEN)
Mobile SS killing squads made up of members of the Gestapo and other police units. Their task was to carry out
special duties in which they tracked down, persecuted and murdered political opponents, like partisans, or those
deemed ‘racially inferior’, such as Jews, Poles, Roma and Sinti throughout the Nazi occupied Soviet territories. The
Einsatzgruppen squads murdered approximately 2 million people (of which 1.3 million were Jews) with no regards
towards age or gender.
‘KRISTALLNACHT’ (NOVEMBER PROGROM)
An anti-Jewish pogrom, staged by the Nazis on the night of 9 November 1938. The ‘Crystal Night’ was retaliation for
the murder of a German diplomat serving in France. It was a centrally planned and managed national. Nearly a 100
Jews were killed, more than 250 synagogues were set on fire, 7500 windows of Jewish businesses were smashed in,
hundreds of homes were ravaged and looted, yet the police did not intervene in these events. It got its name from
the shards of glass falling from show-windows. During the riots some 30 thousand Jews were arrested and sent to
concentration camps.
MEIN KAMPF
Adolf Hitler’s autobiography (in translation: My Struggle) published in two volumes in 1925-26, in which he
formulated his extreme political and ideological anti-Semitic views.
NSB (NATIONAAL SOCIALISTISCHE BEWEGING)
Abbreviation of the Dutch National Socialist Movement. This movement was founded in 1931 by Anton Mussert
and largely shared the Nazi ideas.
NSDAP (NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHE DEUTSCHE ARBEITERPARTEI)
The National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP) also referred to as the Nazi party.
NUREMBERG LAWS
These were the anti-Jewish laws that were promulgated in September of 1935 during the Nuremberg Nazi Party
Conference. The law deprived the Jews of German citizenship and the rights it entails, banned sex relationships and
marriage between Jews and non-Jews, legally. These laws divided people into categories that determined who
qualifies as a Jew, a German, or to have mixed descent. Because of these provisions they are also called the ‘racial
laws’.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
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NUREMBERG TRIALS
During the Nuremberg Trials (20 November 1945 to 1 October 1946) 24 prominent members of the Nazi leadership
were judged and convicted. In October 1946, a number of those convicted were put to death, 12 of them received
a death penalty based primarily on crimes against humanity that they had committed. 7 people had to serve prison
sentences and 3 were acquitted. The NSDAP, the SS, the SA, the German army command, the SD, the Gestapo, and
other Nazi organizations were also put on trial, found guilty, declared criminal organizations.
PREJUDICE
Prejudice is an often negative judgment based in stereotypes about a person or group of people.
ROMA AND SINTI
‘Gypsies’ is a commonly used term, often considered pejorative, to describe Romani people. The principal Romani
groups are Roma and Sinti. The Nazis regarded this group as racially inferior and dangerous to the ‘Aryan society’.
During the Second World War approximately one million Roma and Sinti lived in Europe. Historians calculate that
the number of Roma and Sinti murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators is between 220,000 and 500,000. The
Roma term for the Holocaust is ‘Pharrajimos’ (cutting, fragmentation, destruction), its remembrance day is on
August 2 (it was on this date that the Nazis eradicated the Roma and Sinti camp in Birkenau).
SA (STURMABTEILUNG)
(Stormtroopers) Formed in 1921, it consisted of members of the NSDAP who had volunteered to organize into
paramilitary units that played a key role in the party's access to power. They defended the party's political
assemblies from its opponents’ attacks and actively prevented other events,
often through violence. Until 1934 the organization operated as a kind of auxiliary police, but after the Night of the
Long Knives – when some of its key figures were assassinated – its significance fell.
SOVIET UNION
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) It was founded in 1922 after the Russian revolution, and consisted of
fifteen republics. In 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved.
SS (SCHUTZSTAFFEL)
Nazi Party organization that was originally created as Hitler’s bodyguard. It was partly responsible for the killing
squads that murdered political opponents and ‘racial’ minorities. They were responsible for the systematic murder
of millions of people in the death camps.
STAR OF DAVID
It is a symbol of identity of the religious Jewish people. It is named after the Jewish king David. During the Second
World War, the Nazis and their collaborators twisted from its original meaning. Jews were forced to wear it in
Germany and most countries under Nazi control, beginning with occupied Poland in 1939.
SYNAGOGUE
The synagogue is a hall for assembly or prayer, the Jewish place of worship. Members of the religious Jewish
communities gather here to pray, celebrate and study the Torah.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
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TRANSIT CAMP
Camp in which Jews were held prior to their deportation to concentration and extermination camps. Transit camps
were founded primarily in Western-Europe: Drancy (France), Mechelen (Belgium) and Westerbork (the
Netherlands).
TREATY OF VERSAILLES
The Treaty of Versailles (1919) was a treaty concluded between Germany and the Allied Forces that formally
concluded the First World War. According to the Treaty, Germany had been primarily responsible for all the loss
and damage of the First World War. As a consequence, Germany lost part of its territory and was forced to pay
large amounts to the countries that had suffered from the war.
UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights which
arose directly from the experience of the Second World War. Drafted by representatives with different legal and
cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General
Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally
protected. The Declaration consists of a preamble and thirty articles about all the civil, economic, cultural, political
and social rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled.
WANNSEE CONFERENCE
Meeting of senior Nazi leaders and officials, on 20 January 1942 at a villa outside Berlin to discuss the ‘Final
Solution’. The aim of the meeting was to discuss the murder of the European Jews, its organization, logistics and
material requirements.Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
36Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
37Exhibition Text Anne Frank A History for Today
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How did you react when you heard that you were going to be taking in Anne Frank? Did you agree right away or did it take time to convince you to do this?
I agreed right away to take care of the Frank family. I simply could not do anything else, First, because Otto Frank had been a wonderful boss all the years I had known him. Further, I had often met with his family, who were also great and received me at their home most friendly numerous times. By the way, I did not take them into my home. They were going to hide at Otto Frank's business. I also felt very sorry for them. I had to help.

What were your feelings about the Franks going into hiding?
I was glad that Otto Frank decided to go into hiding, because I was extremely concerned about him and his family, seeing what was happening to the Jews in Amsterdam. Every day you saw trucks with Jews heading for the railway station, from where the trains left for the camps. Nobody ever heard from them again, so I thought Otto did wise to go into hiding.

What was it like to watch Anne and her family in hiding? What was Anne's personality like?
I found it extremely painful to see people who would love to go out and live in freedom now sitting in a small place and worrying all the time what the future would bring. It is truly awful to watch people living in fear. Otto had been my boss for many years. Now, all of sudden, he was dependent on me.

How was it determined who would hide in the Annex?
Otto Frank decided who would stay in the hiding place.

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Did you know about the secret room before the Franks hid there?
The hiding place was initially just part of the business. It was the laboratory, used for product development. During the war there was no development of new products, so Otto Frank decided to transform this space into a hiding space.

Why did you take on the responsibility of hiding the Franks?
My decision to help Otto was because I saw no alternative. I could foresee many sleepless nights and an unhappy life if I refused. And that was not the kind of failure I wanted for myself. Permanent remorse about failing to do your human duty, in my opinion, can be worse than losing your life.

Did your husband agree with you about hiding the Franks, or did you have to convince him?
My husband was in full agreement with my efforts to help the Franks. Actually, he was just as active in assisting them and often visited with the families.

What was it like knowing that the fate of eight people rested in your hands and that you were one of their most valuable resources?
I certainly felt responsible. Particularly to find them enough food so they would stay healthy, that was always on my mind.

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Was it hard to keep the people in hiding a secret?
It was not easy to keep the people in hiding a secret. They were asking questions all the time, but you did not want to upset them with what happened to the Jews in Amsterdam. Anne particularly kept asking and it was her that I told more about the trucks with Jewish families heading for the railway station.

We both read Anne Frank: Beyond the Diary and thought it was great. We also think you are very brave to help the Franks and the Van Pels. We would like to know how old you were. Who were you closest to in the Secret Annex?
I was a young woman in my thirties. I was closest with Anne and with her father, Otto. Anne, because she was the one asking me questions all the time; particularly about what was going on in the world outside the hiding place. As a matter of fact, I liked talking with her. I was 20 years older than she was, but it was like talking to a much older person than a teenager. With Otto I had a close contact because together we were actually managing the logistics of their stay in the hiding place.

Did anyone ever suspect that you were hiding people?
Nobody, not even my own foster parents knew about the people in hiding. Therefore, I had no reason to believe that anyone would suspect this. By visiting several different suppliers a day and not buying everything at the same place, I avoided suspicion with the grocery shops.

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How did you keep the workers at the factory from becoming suspicious?
We kept the workers at the factory from becoming suspicious by avoiding as much as possible to enter the hiding place during office hours. Further, the people in hiding would not flush the toilet during the day and avoid making any other noises.

How did you manage to live when you were giving most of your food away?
I had to buy food in the "black" market. My husband Jan also helped by providing me with so-called ration cards he had obtained illegally. I also knew suppliers, like for instance the greengrocer, who understood what I was doing and would help as much as he could.

When you were going back and forth transporting food and goods to the Franks, did you have to wear a disguise or have some type of plan so the Nazis wouldn't see you?
It was difficult to bring food to the building where the Franks were hiding. I could not bring everything at once because it would raise suspicion. I never carried more than what one shopping bag could hold or what I could hide under my coat. So, I had to make several trips every day.

I understand that you got food for the people in hiding. But, how exactly did you get enough food for everyone in hiding and yourself?
I felt permanent concern regarding the food situation. By visiting several grocery shops and markets a day, I developed a good feeling for the supply situation.

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I would like to know what it was like to spend a night in the hiding place.
Spending that night in the hiding place, together with my husband, opened my eyes for the awful position of my friends. To live with eight people in such a small place, never being allowed to go out, never being able to talk to friends and always fearing the coming of the police.

Why didn't the Franks sleep during the day when they were in hiding in the attic?
Why did the Frank's not sleep during the day and be up during the night? A good question. I think our biological rhythm makes it difficult to do that. Further, during the night, the neighbors would have more easily noticed noises.

What did the people in hiding do with their trash?
The trash (which is very little in times of scarcity) was burned at night in the stove.

What was life like for Margot, Anne, and Peter in the attic?
Life for Peter, Margot, and Anne, being so young, was particularly difficult. They could never go out to play and meet with friends. They could not do any sports, go to the beach, walk through the forests, or do any shopping.

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What happened to Mushi, Peter's cat?
After they were arrested, the cat was still there. It did not run away. But the cat did not feel at home anymore. It missed Peter. But one day the office cleaner asked if she could take the cat. She took Mushi and gave the cat a new home.

Who was the most difficult in hiding?
I can't point at anyone who was difficult to hide. After the war Otto told me (half jokingly) that only Anne's somewhat provocative attitude caused problems.

Was it hard on the people in the Secret Annex to stay quiet for such a long period of time?
I think it must have been very hard for the people in the attic to be quiet for such a long period. I always feel that they were the true heroes during those years.

How did the people get along being locked up for so long?
From Anne's diary we know that it was not always easy for the people in hiding to get along pleasantly. I myself never noticed tensions when I visited with them. After the war, I learned that Otto sternly warned them not to bother the helpers with their conflicts.

How did it feel knowing that you could be raided at any moment, and if the Franks were found, even killed?
I can't remember that I was really afraid while I was hiding the families; I was too busy finding food and other supplies to find time to worry. When I saw my bed in the evening, I would just fall asleep.

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Did you ever consider telling on those in hiding in order to save your own life?
I never considered betraying the Franks, whatever benefit this might have meant for me.

Was there a time when you almost got caught?
Before the arrest, I believe, we never had a narrow escape.

Did you ever feel like the suspicion was mounting and felt that you did not want to be responsible for the Franks and wanted them to leave (and all the other residents)?
I agree that Anne's diary reflects her growing concern about the future. I myself was more optimistic, because the war was gradually coming to an end and during the two years no serious threats became evident. I certainly never considered to stop helping or have them leave. I never wanted to skip responsibility for my friends.

^ Top of Page The Capture

Tell us about the day the Germans arrived to take the Franks away. Did you try to warn the Franks that day? Or did you come home to visit them, and they were gone? Did you try to find them that day?
I would have tried, of course, but it was impossible. One morning, sitting at my desk, I looked up and saw a man pointing a gun at me and saying, "Don't move, keep silent!" The next day I went to the German police office to try to find them. I offered money to buy them free, but I did not succeed. I was very scared when they came that day!

Could you describe for me the last time that you saw Anne?
The last time I saw Anne was at 9:00 on the morning of the arrest. About 11 o'clock the police came. I can't remember what Anne said that last time. I think it was her usual "Hello Miep, and what is the news?"

How did the Nazis find the attic? Who do you think turned the Franks in to the Green Police?
Someone must have betrayed them to the Nazis. We never found out. Don't forget that many people lived in that neighborhood and possibly noticed something by day or heard something at night. It could have been one of the burglars that came to that place. It could have also been one of the people working in the building. We will never know. The Austrian policeman was interviewed afterward, but he did not know who had called the police with the information. The Nazi who took the call died. So they could not ask him who had called. No one knows. Twice, after the war, the Dutch police made an extensive effort to find the person who turned my friends in. Without success! There were suspicions. Some people were pointing at the man working in the warehouse, but the Court decided there was no evidence. Also, in my opinion, I don't think this man has done it. So, we don't know!

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How did you find out about the Franks' capture?
If you read my book Anne Frank Remembered (Simon & Schuster), you will see that I was in the office at the moment the police came. I regret to notice that the play — and from other publications — give a wrong perception regarding the arrest. There was no phone ringing prior to the arrest. This is just dramatization by the playwright.

How did you feel when the Franks got caught?
When the police found the hiding place I mainly felt a tremendous disappointment that so close to the end of the war my friends were caught. We honestly thought that we had made it. Paris was already captured by the Allies. Their troops were less than 250 miles from Amsterdam. Germany had actually lost the war. And then this happened.

What happened to the Franks' house and the possessions in it?
Everything in the Franks' home was taken away by the Germans and sent to Germany. Otto Frank never found his furniture again.

Did you get in trouble when the Nazis found out that you were hiding them?
Of course I was in trouble, but my luck was that the police officer in charge came from Vienna, the same town where I was born. I noticed this from his accent. So, when he came to interrogate me, I jumped up and said, as cheerfully as I could, "You are from Vienna? I am from Vienna too." And, although he got very angry initially, it made him obviously decide not to arrest me. Apart from the shock, the fear and my heart-breaking concern regarding the fate of my friends, nothing happened to me.

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What helped you to carry on after the Franks were captured?
The hope that they would return safely. The war had almost come to an end and the Franks were healthy at the time of their arrest.

Did you ever feel like you could have done something more to help the Franks when they were captured?
I honestly believe we could not have done anything more to help the Franks.

While the Frank family was in a concentration camp, were you able to get any information about them?
After the arrest, I never heard from my friends again, they were not allowed to write.

If you found out who was the one who told on the Franks, what would you say to them?
If I ever found out the person who betrayed my friends, I would not exchange one word with that criminal.

Which camp did Anne and Margot go to when they were caught?
Anne and Margot went first to a transit-camp called Westerbork in the Netherlands. From there they went to Auschwitz and finally to Bergen-Belsen, where they both died.

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Did Anne know anyone in the concentration camp besides her sister?
Much to her surprise she discovered that in another part of the camp (Bergen-Belsen), her friend "Lies" was sitting, the one she writes about a lot in her diary. Her true name is Hanneli Pick-Goslar, who now lives in Israel.

What were some of the horrible things the Nazi party did to other people? Did you ever witness any?
The most horrible thing in my opinion was that they were discriminating against people for a reason those people could not help or change. Just for being Jewish. It made those people feel defenseless. What could they possibly do? Just sit there and wait in fear. This was terrorizing the poor Jews, even at the time that they could still live in their own homes. What I never forget myself was the day that the Franks were arrested. I still hear their steps in the stairway when they were brought outside.

^ Top of Page After the War — Otto Frank

How did you meet Mr. Frank?
I met Otto Frank in 1933, nine years before he had to go into hiding. I was looking for a job and heard from a neighbor that a certain Mr. Frank looked for an office assistant. I applied and got the job.

Do you know how Otto Frank escaped death when the rest of his family and the other families in hiding didn't?
Otto's escape from death is a miracle. When the Russians finally liberated him in Auschwitz, he was ill, very weak, and extremely skinny.

When Otto Frank returned, was he bruised, really skinny, pale? What was his physical condition? What was his mental condition?
Otto Frank was very skinny when he returned from the camp. However, he was mentally in good condition.

What happened to Mr. Frank after the war?
Otto Frank returned to Amsterdam. He picked up his business again, but after the publication of the diary, he was very busy answering the thousands of letters he received from children about the diary. He moved to Switzerland after the war. He was the only survivor from the Secret Annex.

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After the war, was it hard to see Mr. Frank again and not see the others?
It was not difficult to meet Mr. Frank when he returned from Auschwitz. I was of course very happy. Not easy was my time with Otto Frank after he had learned he had lost his whole family. For me this was awful, too.

What do you remember most vividly about your meeting with Otto Frank after the war?
My most vivid memory of Otto is the day that he learned about the death of his two children, and my giving Anne's diary to him at that very sad moment. I cannot forget the way he looked at that time.

Did you and Mr. Frank remain friends?
My husband and I were close friends with Otto until he died in 1980, at ninety-one years old. The first seven years after the war he even lived in our home in Amsterdam, until he remarried in 1952. Then he moved to Basel, Switzerland.

What year did Otto Frank die?
Otto Frank died in 1980 at the age of ninety-one in his home Buchenstrasse 12, Birsfelden; a small town near Basel, Switzerland.

^ Top of Page About WW II

How exactly did the war start? Why did it take so long to end it?
The war started because Hitler wanted to control all of Europe and maybe the whole world. So, reluctantly the other countries decided to stop him. It did take so long to defeat Hitler, because in previous years the rest of the world had delayed action and Hitler used that time to build a very strong army.

What other places did people hide in besides the Secret Annex? Did most people have someone to bring them food and other supplies, or did they have to sneak out and get the supplies themselves? How many people actually lived through the war in hiding without being discovered?
The usual places to hide people in were the attics of homes. Others stayed in the woods or in sheds. People in hiding were always dependent on others for food; they could not do it alone. In Holland, 20,000 people went into hiding. Only 11,000 were not caught.

Students here are studying WW II and have noticed the symbol SS on the sleeves of the Nazis. What does that stand for?
SS stands for "Schutz Staffel," which means "Protection Flight" or "Defense Squadron."

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Did the Germans carry guns when they searched?
The Germans always carried guns when they searched places.

What was the percentage of the people in Holland that persecuted the Jews? If you didn't know the Franks, would you have still helped other Jews?
About 2 or 3 percent of the Dutch people were Nazis or in support of them. Many others were indifferent to the fate of the Jews and preferred to look away from it. If other Jews than the Franks had asked for help, I would, of course, helped them too. Actually, my husband did such in several cases.

How did the treatment of the Jews compare with the treatment of the Christians who helped the Jews?
The Dutch who helped the Jews were also sent to a camp, but with a milder regime than the camps for Jews. My male office colleagues were put in such a camp and both survived.

Was Hitler liked at first and then later hated for his meanness?
Initially many liked Hitler. Germany was economically in very poor shape and people (like many tend to do also today) were looking for somebody to blame for the misery. Hitler offered the Jews as scapegoats and that certainly made him popular. He also promised jobs at the cost of the "non-Aryans" (the non-Germans). Hitler promised to take their civil rights away, like he did shortly after he came to power. For instance, the Jews, who were German citizens, lost this position overnight. Today we call this ethnic cleansing. In may places, all over the world, lots of people again support the idea of having immigrants thrown from the country.

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How has Holland changed since the end of World War II?
I hope and believe that many Dutch people will be more helpful in the future than they were during the Holocaust. Only 11,000 Jews were safely brought through the war. The others, about 105,000, perished and that could have been a considerably lower figure if all Dutch people understood their responsibility to help.

Do you think it's possible for something like this to happen again?
I certainly think that another Holocaust can happen again. It did already occur, think of Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia.

What message should the young people of today pass on about Anne's story?
The message to take from Anne's story is to stop prejudice and discrimination right at its beginning. Prejudice starts when we speak about THE Jews, THE Arabs, THE Asians, THE Mexicans, THE Blacks, THE Whites. This leads to the feeling that all members of each such group think and act the same. That results in prejudice. Lumping entire groups of people together is RACISM, because it denies the fact that everyone is an individual. Even our own brothers and sisters or parents are not exactly like we are. So how do we dare to lump entire groups of people together? If any German had ever asked Anne to tell something about herself, I think she would be still with us today. However, nobody asked: she was just a Jew! Therefore, never base your opinion about anybody else on the color of that person's skin, or on the passport that a person carries, or on the family that person comes from, but only on what the person says and does and on NOTHING ELSE.

If you could, would you ever speak to the neo-Nazis that live in Germany today? What would you say to them?
I would urge them to realize that racist ideas caused the death of Anne Frank, an ordinary and innocent child, and also the death of millions of people.

^ Top of Page Anne Frank

When was Anne's birthday?
Anne was born June 12, 1929.

How long did you know Anne?
I knew Anne since 1935 when Otto (my boss since 1933) invited me to come to his home to meet his family.

What was your relationship with Anne Frank before the war? Did you ever think that the Nazis would find out and kill you and your family?
A very superficial one. She was just a child, who I did not pay much attention to. I saw her at her home, when I visited with her parents. Sometimes she would come with friends to my office and play with the house phone. I was deeply disappointed that so close to the end of the war the Nazis found Anne. Before that I was rather convinced that we would make it. Being probably killed myself by the Nazis never crossed my mind. If I was ever concerned, it was about the people in the hiding place.

What type of person was Anne Frank? Was she nice? Was she fun to be with?
I would describe Anne as an ordinary, normal young girl before she went into hiding. I saw her as a friendly, cheerful, fun-loving, and somewhat loud girl, with very curious eyes. After going into hiding her eyes grew gradually pensive as well. Although she loved to talk, she would immediately be silent, if someone else would speak, observing that person very closely.

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Did Anne like to do some of the hobbies children her age do, like playing sports and doing crafts?
Anne was not really a sports girl. As a matter of fact, she was not what you would call a strong or sturdy person. As far as I know she was not doing crafts, but enjoyed working at her diary and writing short stories. She also liked illustrating them. Further she took a keen interest in movies and actors.

Where did Anne go to write her diary? How did Anne keep the others from reading her private information?
Most times Anne wrote her diary in her bedroom. This room she had to share with the dentist, so she had to work out an arrangement with him. From her diary we know that this was not always easy, because Dussel could not imagine that a young girl really needed a workplace. During the weekends her father allowed her to go downstairs and sit in his former office. This space was not part of the hiding place. Its furniture was not taken away after their arrest; therefore, the chair that Anne had been sitting and the desk at which she was writing are still there. Anne had a briefcase where she kept her diary that could be locked. The edited version contains also some very private parts, but there was some more to it. In the edited version, most of her unpleasant remarks about her mother were left out and also the rather graphic (but delicate) description of her developing body and sexuality. Furthermore, her concern about the position of women (entered the day after her 15th birthday) was initially not included.

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Was Anne always as cheerful as she was in her diary?
I would describe Anne as an ordinary, normal young girl before she went into hiding. I saw her as a cheerful, fun-loving, and somewhat loud girl, with curious eyes. After going into hiding her eyes grew gradually pensive as well. Although she loved to talk, she would immediately be silent if someone else would speak, observing that person very closely. My funniest memory of Anne Frank is going to the attic in the morning to pick up the shopping list. All of the people would silently stand in line, waiting for me to begin, except for Anne, who would always break the silence by saying, "Hello Miep, and what is the news?" Her mother strongly disliked that, knowing that the other people in hiding would afterwards blame Otto for what they would call "the result of a too liberal upbringing." A sad memory I have is one day when I entered the hiding place and found Anne writing in her diary. She felt her privacy abused and probably thought that I was spying on her. She closed her diary with a bang and gave me a hostile look. Her mother came in and said, noticing the tense situation between the two of us, "You should know, Miep, that my daughter is writing a diary." I did not know that; I was the one giving her blank paper, after she had run out of space in her little diary. Anne stood up, looked down on me and said, "And about you too," then left the room.

How old was Anne when she went into hiding?
Anne was thirteen when she went into hiding and fifteen when arrested.

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What memories do you have of the relationship between Anne and Peter?
I never noticed a close relationship between Peter and Anne. Once Peter asked me to buy flowers for Anne. That was the only time I understood that Peter liked Anne.

Did Anne ever get very sick in the Annex? If so, what did she have?
The one time Anne needed a doctor was when her eyesight became poor. She probably needed spectacles. I offered to bring her to a doctor, but Otto did not agree.

Was Anne ever scared?
Anne never told me that she was scared, but from her diary we know that she had such moments.

Did Anne talk to you more about happenings in the Secret Annex or were your conversations more centered around the progress of the war?
My discussions with Anne were mainly about the things going on in Amsterdam. She never talked or complained about the other people in the hiding place. About the progress of the war, Anne talked with her father. He was pretty well-informed because he secretly listened to British radio.

I've heard different stories about Anne. One is that she almost cost the Franks and the Van Daans their lives because of noises she would make. Could you give me an example of one and how did you try to cover for it when other people heard it?
I strongly deny that Anne ever made noise or threatened to do so.

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When did you find out that Anne had died?
In August 1945 a letter came for Otto Frank from a nurse who had been with Anne in the same part of Bergen-Belsen, telling him that his two daughters had died.

What day did Anne die?
The precise date is not known. All we know is that she died some day in March 1945. She died of a disease called typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. I still have the letter informing Otto, written by the lady who was in the same camp as Anne, telling him that Anne had died.

What would be different if Anne never existed or if she had lived through the Holocaust?
If Anne had never existed, we would not have had her diary that touched the heart and gave inspiration to millions and millions of people. If she had lived through the Holocaust, the question is whether she would have published the diary herself. I think she would have done so, but I am not sure. In my opinion, one thing is certain: She would have combined her writing skills and her ability to observe, becoming a great journalist.

How old was Anne's mother when she died?
Anne's mother was only forty-four when she died in Auschwitz.

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How do you think Anne would react to all of this attention and fame if she were alive today?
I think that Anne would have liked the fame if she were alive. Already as a young girl she liked to be in the middle of her friends' attention. Maybe this could have changed later in life, but not very likely.

What is the most outstanding memory you have of Anne Frank and the horrors of the war?
My most outstanding memory of Anne is meeting with her in the morning, when I visited the hiding place to pick up the shopping list. It is an indelible memory of Anne standing at the top of the stairs and hearing her cheerful voice: "Hello, Miep, what is the news today?" The horror of the war I experienced most deeply was the day that the Nazis came to arrest the Frank family and their friends. Every year I stay at home on August 4, the day of their arrest. I close the curtains and don't answer the phone or doorbell.

If Anne had lived, do you think that Anne would be as positive as she was?
I can't answer the question about whether Anne would be just as positive as she was in hiding. Speaking for myself, I am still optimistic about our future world. Also Anne's father kept basic confidence in people, so Anne might have kept hers.

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Are you proud of Anne for never losing faith?
I am proud of Anne, because notwithstanding her very difficult situation, she always found the energy and the perseverance to write her diary.

Do you miss Anne Frank?
Of course I miss her very much. She was always such an attentive listener to what I told her. I liked her intelligent questions. Therefore, I am grateful for her diary. It is as if I hear her voice again.

What were the last words Anne said to you before she got captured?
At the time of her arrest, I was not with her. That morning I had seen her for the last time, when I came to the hiding place to pick up the shopping list, as I usually did. At that time, she greeted me the way she always did: "Hello Miep, what is the news today?"

If you were put in Anne Frank's position, how would you react?
Till today, I am impressed by the patience and perseverance of the people in the hiding place. I really wonder how I would have been under such circumstances. Would I have had the discipline and courage to keep a diary? I wonder. Would I have been always so friendly and cheerful as Anne was? I doubt it. I consider Anne and the others in hiding real heroes. Further, I believe the Franks could not do anything beyond what they had done. I also would have gone into hiding. There were no other options besides obeying the German orders.

^ Top of Page The Diary

After not wanting to have Anne's diary published, what suddenly caused you to change your mind?
I never opposed publication of the diary. Initially, I did oppose reading it because I feared it would cause me just more pain. This changed completely when I finally agreed to read the diary.

Did you have a part in publishing Anne's diary?
I had no part whatsoever in publishing Anne's diary.

Is everything about the characters in the published diary true?
The characters as Anne described in her diary reflect, of course, her opinion. I myself consider some of the people more genteel than Anne did, like her mother and the dentist Dussel.

Is anybody else in Anne Frank's diary alive?
I am the last one of the helpers still alive. Anne's friends Jopie and Lies (true names Jacqueline van Maarsen and Hanneli Pick-Goslar) are still living. Both travel regularly to the U.S. to speak at schools.

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Why did Mr. Frank change the names of the people when he wrote the book?
It was Anne (and NOT Otto Frank) who changed the names of the people. Like other authors do too, Anne felt she should not use the real names. This gives me the feeling that she planned publication of the diary after the war.

Did you ever think at the time what an impact your actions and Anne's diary might have?
I never foresaw the impact Anne's diary — as well as my saving that diary — would have. I just picked it up in order to give it to Anne when she would return.

How did your life change after you found the diary?
After the diary was found by me and published by Otto, my life gradually changed. I did a lot of travel worldwide to tell about Anne. Hundreds of letters came to my hands every month. I have almost become a kind of public property.

How do you feel about the diary having become so memorable, truly a classic? Do you still have the original diary and photos of Anne Frank?
The diary became so important because it is the only memory of Anne. After the war I gave the diary to Otto Frank, the only one of the Frank family who survived the concentration camp. Otto Frank died in 1980 and donated the original diary to the Dutch government.

When you read Anne's diary, what came to your mind when you saw your name and realized that she had mentioned you?
I was moved to read my name in Anne's diary and the nice things she said about me. I was surprised that she had changed the names of all the people, except mine. Did she feel too close to me to give me another name? I will never know, but it really touches me.

^ Top of Page About Miep Gies

How did you feel at first with your adopted family?
Meeting my foster parents, I was surprised that such generous people did exist. They had little money themselves and already had five children, but always shared all they had with other people.

How old were you when the Holocaust started?
I was thirty-four when Hitler came to power and forty-one when the Holocaust started.

As a girl, did you ever imagine something like WW II happening?
As a child I could never imagine that people would be so cruel towards others. Even during the war we refused to believe the reports about the gas chambers.

How did you feel about Hitler's ideas and rules?
I despised Hitler from the first day that he opened his mouth. He was a racist, hating all immigrants and other non-Aryan (non-German) people, like the Jews.

What was your job at Mr. Frank's factory?
I was a secretary at Mr. Frank's office.

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Did you ever feel like you were part of the Frank family?
In a certain way I felt very close to my friends in hiding. Still I always looked up to the Franks as the family of my boss.

How did it feel to help many people who needed you to survive?
I think that it creates a rewarding feeling to help people. Therefore, the more the better. This, at least, I feel. Think of the many doctors and nurses who accept at a very low pay an uncomfortable (often even dangerous) task in faraway countries, just to help people.

Weren't you terribly frightened during the time you hid Anne Frank? Wouldn't it be easier for you just to live your life as a German without this burden? What could you tell us today about caring for others instead of just thinking of ourselves?
Of course, initially life is more comfortable if you stay out. You might silence your concern about injustice or cruel things happening to other people by telling yourself that those people should solve their problems themselves. It is a very selfish attitude, but, as I said, safe in the beginning. But, I could foresee that there would come a day that my conscience would start to bother me. This would be a kind of burden. Just like many people, all over the world, are unhappy and restless today because they did not help the Jews during the Holocaust. Think for instance of the ships with Jews that tried to enter the U.S. and were sent back! So, my conclusion is that really thinking of yourself is often better served by making some sacrifices today than having a miserable life later, feeling remorse about the help you failed to give to those who needed you. By the way, I am born Austrian, not German.

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How did it affect your family life to help Anne Frank and her family? Did it make you feel good?
Both Jan, my husband, and I felt really grateful for the opportunity to help them. It brought a lot of sense to our lives. It is always nice to feel needed by other people. This, at least, is my understanding of living a worthwhile life.

How did your parents feel about you helping the Jews out in their predicament, and were they against you or were they with you helping the Jews hide?
My (foster) parents did not know about me helping the Franks. They might have worried. You would never talk with anybody about Jews in hiding. People may start talking about it to others. This was dangerous. There was a lot of betrayal. Of course my husband knew. He was my big helper.

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Were there others that you helped? Where are they now?
We kept a non-Jewish student who was wanted by the Germans hidden at our home. That person went to the United States. I don't know whether he still lives there, we lost contact.

I am a nine-year-old Jew. I am very interested in learning about the Holocaust. How could you be so heroic if you were so afraid? Did the Nazis ever find you?
Even if you are afraid, you can still find it more important to do your human duty, and that is to assist people who need more help. I don't consider myself heroic. To tell you, I was more afraid of the many sleepless nights and the unhappy life I would have afterward had I refused to help.

How does it feel to be a hero?
I don't want to be considered a hero. Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary.

Have you received any recognition for helping the Franks, Van Daans, and Dussel hide from the German troops? Did you have to leave your country because of what you did?
I received recognition from Yad Vashem, from the German Government, and from the Queen of the Netherlands. I have several medallions and even an honorary Ph.D.

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What is your most valued memory from your past?
My most valued memory is Anne's diary.

Do you have any nightmares about this time?
I have no nightmares, but I can never forget what happened to my friends.

What are your husband's and child's names?
My husband's name was Jan (Henk in the diary). My son's name is Paul. He was born in 1950 and lives with his wife and three (wonderful) children a half-hour drive from my home.

How did your husband die?
My unforgettable husband for over 50 years, Jan (Henk in the diary), died of diabetes in 1994.

How old are you now?
I am eighty-eight now.

Where do you live now?
I have lived for almost 70 years, until now, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I have a small apartment that I shared for 40 years with my husband Jan till he died in 1994.

Do you feel that you are in another world because when you were young there were no TVs and now you're on the Internet?
Yes, we live in a different world today. Children who use the Internet are much better informed than when I was young. Use this to your advantage.

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If you had to hide the Franks again, would you do it?
Yes, I would help again. Although, some people (rightfully) state that I could have not saved Anne's life, I still helped her to live another two years. During these years she wrote her wonderful diary, touching the heart of millions of people and inspiring them. Because I could rescue this diary, it was not a lost effort. From this we learn that it is always better to try. Sure failure results from not trying. My decision to help Otto was because I saw no alternative. I could foresee many sleepless nights and an unhappy life if I would refuse. And that was not the kind of future I wanted to for myself. Permanent remorse about failing to do your human duty, in my opinion, can be worse than losing your life.

What are the things you are most proud of that you have done to remember Anne? Where have you moved since the houses you lived in with Anne have become museums?
The thing I enjoy most having done is that I could save Anne's diary. Through her diary Anne is remembered by millions of people. She said in her diary that she wanted to live after her death. Through her diary this really happened. I did not live at the place where Anne was hiding. She was staying in the place where I served as secretary. It was the building in which Otto Frank, Anne's father, had his business before he had to go into hiding with his family.

^ Top of Page The Annex

Is the Annex still standing?
The Annex is certainly still standing.

Is the house exactly as it was when Anne was in it?
Anne and her family stayed on two floors in the Annex to the main building. Those two floors are exactly like they were when Anne was in it. The rest of the building has been remodeled to serve as a museum. None of the furniture is there. They removed the furniture.

^ Top of Page Thank-you Notes to Miep Gies

Thank you for taking the time and effort to write back to the many children who have been touched by reading Anne's diary. You are truly a hero who so unselfishly gave of yourself to protect those who needed you. My class has been greatly impressed by you. Please receive our most humble gratitude. It was a great way to end an even greater book.

Our literature class is studying Anne Frank right now. This online event could not have come at a better time. I found that this was a very useful experience for my classmates and me!

Thank you very much for answering my question. My question asked why you changed your mind about publishing the diary. When you answered it I found out that you never objected to it, it just hurt you so much to read it. That really helped me to understand.