Far from an ordinary person

On Monday, Miep Gies, who along with her husband Jan, helped hide and sustain Anne Frank's family for more than two years, died at the age of 100.

Gies, who worked as a secretary for Otto Frank, found the pages of Anne's diary, scattered in the attic hiding place, gathered and saved them for Anne. The paper the diary was written on was smuggled in by Gies, who also became confidante to the 13-year-old Anne. Gies had hoped to return the diary to Anne, but after her father, who had survived Auschwitz, learned that Anne and her sister Margo had perished at Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, less than a month before the camp was liberated, she gave the diary to him.

After learning the news, Miep could not find words to comfort her friend. Then she remembered Anne's diary. She took it out of the desk and gave it to him, saying: "Here is your daughter Anne's legacy to you."

Two years later, The Diary of Anne Frank was published. It has become the second-highest best-selling non-fiction book in the world, second only to The Bible.

I'm sure many of you read The Diary of Anne Frank during your school years. Perhaps you saw a live production of the work, or the film adaptation of the book. I can recall reading the book in junior high, some 30 years after it was written.

Learning about the Holocaust is something we all deal with in our own way. Some choose to dismiss the entire episode as an aberration, something that could never occur again. The fact of the matter is that genocide has occurred several times since the end of WWII, and tolerance is something that seems to be difficult to achieve.

On Tuesday morning, I heard excerpts from interviews that Miep Gies had given over the years. She preferred to talk about the Franks, and often downplayed the role she and her husband played in hiding the eight people. She said that she was just an ordinary person, and that she was living proof that you did not have to be extraordinarily brave to help others.

The Gestapo came for the Franks and the four other Jews in hiding on August 4, 1944. No one knows who turned them in, and Otto Frank resisted attempts to find out the identity of the person or persons who had informed on them. It remains a mystery to this day.

Miep Gies could not read Anne's diary for two years, and finally did so at the insistence of Otto Frank, Anne's father. For the rest of her life, Gies dedicated herself to making sure the world remembered Anne Frank. She personally answered letters from people all over the world.

In 1987 she published a book, Anne Frank Remembered. In it she observed: "I am not a hero. I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did and more -- much more -- during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the heart of those of us who bear witness."

On August 4 every year, the day of the arrest, Miep Gies would shut herself away in her house and see no one. "I act as though the day does not exist. It is my personal memorial to my people," she explained.

In 1996 Jon Blair's film Anne Frank Remembered won an Oscar for best documentary feature. Blair took Miep Gies to the ceremony in Hollywood, and as they were on their way to the awards in their limousine she remarked that she had agreed to come because Anne Frank had always wanted to be famous, and that she had loved Hollywood. Blair took Miep Gies on to the stage when he made his acceptance speech, and the audience gave her a standing ovation.

I hope the day never comes in this country when any of us have to make the choices that Miep Gies faced. I believe that many ordinary people would do the extraordinary, just like Miep Gies.

As always, I welcome your comments. You can reach me by email at tstangl@lemarscomm.net, telephone 712-546-7031, x40 or toll free 1-800-728-0066 x40.

Thanks for reading, I'll keep in touch. Feel free to do the same.