She is a woman who took all the risks during the Second World War. Miep Gies hid Anne Franck but also other families who risked being deported. Focus on this woman who did not hesitate to risk her life for others.
For Miep Gies, there was no question of watching the Nazis take the lives of Jews in the Netherlands during World War II. It is for this reason that she did not hesitate to take all the risks to protect as much as possible. This very courageous woman was born in 1909 in Vienna before moving to the Netherlands when she was eleven years old. When she was 24, she started working for Otto Franka Jewish businessman, who sold spices and pectins, in Amsterdam. Otto Frank had two children, one of whom Anne Frank. When the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, Jewish men, women and children were sent to concentration camps where they lived in terrible conditions and had to work for many hours without eating almost anything. Others were killed as soon as they arrived at the camp.
Faced with the situation, Otto Frank had asked had asked Miep Gies to help him protect his family and therefore to hide it. For two years, she managed to hide the Franks in a secret apartment. As she risked death, she never stopped coming to bring food to the Frank family, but also to other Jewish families. In their house, Miep Gies and her husband also hid a Jewish student.
Miep Gies and her husband were considered heroes
However, in 1944, the apartment in which these Jews were hiding was finally discovered. A new time, Miep Gies went all out trying to bribe German officials to prevent them from being sent to concentration camps. But she won’t. She had taken care to keep Anne Frank’s diary hoping one day can give it back to him. Only, only Otto Frank and the student came back alive from the camp. Until her death in 2010, Miep Gies was considered a hero in the Netherlands, just like her husband. Both had received several awards including the title of Righteous Among the Nations.