Miep Gies who died yesterday aged 100 was our last living link to Anne Frank. It was she who found the diary and kept it, unread, until she could hand it over to Anne’s father Otto, her former employer after the war.
Miep was one of several non-Jewish neighbours of the Frank family who helped them and tried to protect them at great risk to their own lives.
The Diary became an icon of the Holocaust, a poignant tale of a maturing young girl hiding from certain death which she so narrowly almost avoided. Her struggle ended in Bergen-Belsen a few weeks before liberation.
Yet there are those today who trivialise Anne and her Diary, who say it’s a Zionist fake, who abuse her memory and millions like her. But they just had to ask Miep. She was there. She saw it all. She new the truth and was not shy of telling it.
“I’m not a hero’, she said, “It wasn’t something I planned in advance, I simply did what I could to help.”
But that’s exactly what heroism is.
Thank you Miep, a truly great lady.