Hermine Santruschitz, better known as Miep Gies, was one of the Dutch citizens
who hid Anne Frank, her family and four other Jews from the Nazis in an annex
above Anne's father'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 to whom she became very attached. Although she was
initially only to stay for six months, this stay was extended to one year
because of frail health, after which she chose to remain with them, living the
rest of her life in the Netherlands. In 1933 she began working for Otto Frank, a
businessman who had moved with his family from Germany to the Netherlands
in hopes of sparing his family Nazi persecution because they were Jewish.
Gies became a close, trusted friend of the family and was a great support to
them during the two years they spent in hiding. She retrieved Anne Frank's diary
after the family was arrested and kept the papers safe until Otto Frank
returned from Auschwitz in 1945, and learned of his younger daughter's death.
Together with Alison Leslie Gold Gies authored the book Anne Frank Remembered:
The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family, first published
in 1987. Early life
Born Hermine Santruschitz in Vienna,, Gies was transported 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 six
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 in Amsterdam. Gies was an honour student,
and described herself as "reserved and very independent"; after graduating high
school, she worked as an accountant and then as a secretary with the Dutch
branch of the German firm Opekta. Otto Frank had just relocated from Germany
and had been appointed managing director of Opekta's recently expanded Dutch
operations. She became a close friend of the Frank family, as did Jan Gies, her
long-time fiancé. After refusing to join a Nazi women's association, her passport
was invalidated and she was ordered to be deported within ninety days back to
Austria. The couple were married quickly on 16 July 1941 so that she could obtain
Dutch citizenship and thus evade deportation. Gies' 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 Gies, and the other
Opekta employees, Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, and Bep Voskuijl, Miep
Gies helped hide Otto and Edith Frank, their daughters Margot and Anne, Hermann
and his wife Auguste van Pels, their son Peter, and Fritz Pfeffer in several
upstairs rooms in the company's office building on Amsterdam's Prinsengracht
from July 6, 1942 to August 4, 1944. In an interview, Gies said she was glad to
help the families hide because she was extremely concerned about them seeing
what was happening to the Jews in Amsterdam. Every day, she saw trucks
loaded with Jews heading to the railway station from where the trains left for
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 a day. She never
carried more than what one shopping bag could hold or what she could hide under
her coat. She kept the workers at Opekta from being suspicious by trying not to
enter the hiding place during office hours. Her husband also helped her by
providing ration cards which he had obtained illegally. By visiting several
grocery shops and markets a day, Gies developed a good feeling for the supply
situation. At their apartment, a short bicycle ride
away from the secret annex, Gies and her husband, also hid an anti-Nazi
university student. = The capture=
On the morning of 4 August 1944, sitting at her desk, Gies looked up and saw a
man pointing a gun towards Anne and her sister and said, "Sit down! Don't even
flinch!" The families had been betrayed and the Grüne Polizei arrested the
people hidden at 263 Prinsengracht, as well as Mr. Kugler and Johannes Kleiman.
The next day, Gies went to the German police office to try to find them. 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. Gies remained safe with Jan in Amsterdam
throughout the rest of the war. Before the hiding place was emptied by
the authorities, Gies retrieved Anne Frank's diaries and saved them in her
desk drawer. Once the war was over and it was confirmed that Anne Frank had
perished in Bergen-Belsen, Gies gave the collection of papers and notebooks to
the sole survivor from the Secret Annex, Otto Frank. After transcribing sections
for his family, his daughter's literary ability became apparent and he 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 diary contained the names of all five of the helpers as
well as their black market suppliers. She was persuaded by Otto Frank to read
it in its second printing. As 1947 came, she and Jan Gies moved to Jekerstraat
65, by the Merwedeplein. Otto Frank moved with them.
Honors and awards 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
medal. In 1997, she was knighted in the Order of Orange-Nassau by Queen Beatrix
of the Netherlands. The minor planet 99949 Miepgies is named in her honor.
On 30 July 2009, the Austrian Ambassador to the Netherlands, Wolfgang Paul,
presented Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria to
Gies at her home. Death
On 11 January 2010, at the age of 100, Miep Gies died due to complications from
a fall in a nursing home while in Hoorn, a town 45 kilometres northeast of
Amsterdam. She outlived her husband, Jan Gies, by 17 years.
References External links
Official website of Miep Gies Miep Gies at the Internet Movie Database
Profile of Miep Gies from the Anne Frank Museum
Interview footage of Miep and Henk Gies from the Anne Frank Museum
Quicktime movie. Miep Gies remembers how she met Anne Frank
Image of Miep's wartime identity card Photo of Miep and Henk Gies, Bep
Voskuijl, Victor Kugler taken in the 1970s
Miep Gies – her activity to save Jews' lives during the Holocaust, at Yad
Vashem website Holocaust Rescuers Bibliography with
information and links to books about Miep Gies and other Dutch rescuers
Miep Gies - Daily Telegraph obituary