Miep Gies: A Beacon of Hope
Dear all,
The assembly that falls before – or on – 27th January is one of the most important of the school year, as it is the time when we commemorate one of the darkest chapters in human history – The Holocaust. The reason we do so is to remember that evil can flourish in our world if good people do nothing to stop it. Here is a copy of the reading, which I shared with our students after the assembly on Monday.
‘Today’s assembly reading is about a woman called Hermine Gies. Born in Vienna in 1909, she was taken to Holland after the First World War due to the abject poverty in which she was living, and fostered by a Dutch family who took her in despite having five children of their own. She became known as Miep (pronounced ‘meep’) and the family moved to Amsterdam in 1922. During the 1930s she worked as a secretary for a company that made spices and preservatives for jam. There was little in her early life that could be described as remarkable.
A few years previously, a Jewish man called Otto Frank had fled Germany to escape the Nazis and had been given the job of running the Amsterdam branch of the company where Miep worked. She had become friendly with Otto, his wife Edith and their two young daughters Margot and Anne.
When the Nazis invaded Holland in 1940, the persecution of Jews followed quickly and the only way Otto Frank was able to continue working was by transferring control of the business to his non-Jewish employees. Two years of increasing prejudice and hostility followed before the Nazis began deporting the Jewish people of Holland. On 6th July 1942, the family went into hiding in a hidden annex above and behind the business premises, where they stayed for two years. During that time, Miep provided food, clothing and other necessities for the family (and others who were also hiding in the same rooms). If caught, she and her fellow helpers would have faced almost certain execution and they had to be very careful not to arouse suspicion. They stole ration cards, bought food in different shops and had to keep the existence of the hidden rooms a secret by only accessing them outside office hours.
It was during this period that Otto’s daughter Anne wrote the diary that would become part of one of the most well-known stories of the Holocaust: the story of Anne Frank.
On August 4, 1944 – after the D-Day landings that would eventually lead to Hitler’s defeat – the hiding place was discovered and the occupants arrested by the Gestapo. Miraculously, Miep and Jan Gies managed to avoid imprisonment but the family were not so lucky – they were deported to Auschwitz. Margot and Anne were taken to another camp – Bergen-Belsen – in October 1944, and subsequently died of disease and starvation in the early months of 1945. Only Otto – their father – survived.
Miep and a fellow helper had managed to retrieve Anne’s diary before the house had been emptied in 1944, and had been planning to return it to her if she survived. Instead, she gave the diaries to Otto when he returned to Holland after the war, and he decided that it should serve as a spotlight on the impact of hatred and prejudice experienced by Jewish people under the Nazis. Having typed it into a single manuscript, the diary was published under the title ‘The House Behind’, following which it was translated into English and since when it has been dramatised a number of times.
Miep Gies lived until January 2010 and died a month short of her 101st birthday. She was given a number of awards in recognition of the role she had played in protecting the Frank family, and others. In 1994, she was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany; in 1995 she received the Yad Vashem Righteous Among the Nations medal; and in 1997 she was knighted in the Order of Orange-Nassau by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. In 2009, the Austrian Ambassador to the Netherlands presented her with the Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria.
She was a beacon of hope at a time of darkness, and someone from whom we can all take inspiration.’
Miep Gies was an ordinary person who made the decision to stand up to prejudice and hatred, even though it meant risking her own life in the process. Whilst she was grateful for these awards, she also said they embarrassed her. In her own words, she said
‘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.’
Of course, most people didn’t choose to do the right thing, which raises a question that should challenge every one of us: what would you have done if you’d been living during the Nazi occupation? Would you have complied with the order to abandon Jewish neighbours and friends? Would you have cooperated or collaborated with the Nazi to survive or even profit from their occupation? Or would you have had the courage and determination to do the right thing and help in the way Miep Gies did?
As I said to our students on Monday, it is an incredibly sad fact that whilst in so many ways we have far less discrimination in our world now than was the case then, prejudice and hatred still exists, including anti-Semitism. It is the duty of every one of us to learn the lesson of history and ensure such things have no place in our school, our country and our world. There was nothing extraordinary about the early life of Miep Gies or the many people like her who did the right thing – but ordinary people can choose to do extraordinary things, and we all have that within us.
I also shared some links with our students in case they would like to learn more about Anne Frank, whilst the story of Miep Gies has recently been dramatised (‘A Small Light’) by National Geographic and is available on Disney + .
Have a good weekend
Best wishes
Michael Bond
