To Unknown Heroes
Anne Frank Remembered by Miep Gies
Miep Gies died this week. She was 100 years old.
That name probably means nothing to the majority of the people reading this book review. It wouldn’t to me if I hadn’t been forced to read The Diary of Anne Frank in high school. To be totally truthful, the diary isn’t that exciting. Most of the pages are taken up with teenage angst and it serves more to put a face on the six million who lost their lives during the holocaust than to excite the reader. Anne does mention, quite often, a woman named Miep Gies who worked in her father’s company and did the shopping for the family in hiding. She is a peripheral character cast half in the shadow of Anne’s writing and personality.
This is true no longer. Miep Gies wrote and published a biography some years ago. It tells the story from her point of view, the struggles she went through to protect the Franks and the price she paid to do it. The book is well written and interesting and shows clearly the type of person it takes to keep secrets like this and save or try to save families. Miep repeats over and over that she only did what was right and what other people did. It stands to reason then that if Anne is the face of the victims of the Holocaust, Miep is the face of the millions of people who risked their lives to save or try to save the victims of the Holocaust.
It is said that all that is needed for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. Miep, and the other unknown heroes of the Holocaust are proof that there are good people willing to do something.
Anne Frank Remembered is available for check out at the Cavendish Fletcher Community Library.