Miep Gies Saved Anne Frank’s Story for the World

News outlets are reporting the death of the last surviving member of a brave group that helped Anne Frank and her family hide from the Nazis. For two years, Miep Gies was part of a small group that aided eight Jewish hideaways in the “secret annex” of a warehouse building alongside the Prinsengracht Canal in central Amsterdam.

After the building was raided by the Nazi SS and Dutch police, Gies gathered and saved Anne’s writings, reportedly without ever reading them. Gies returned the diary to Anne’s father, Otto, after learning of Anne’s death at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Anne’s diary is the centerpiece around which Amsterdam’s Anne Frank House Museum is built. A moving tribute to the young writer, visitors enter the secret annex through a cleverly-concealed staircase, just as those in hiding did more than six decades ago. The rooms of the hideout are preserved as they were in August 1944. The photographs and postcards Anne pasted on her bedroom wall can still be seen. Her original diary, since translated into more than 60 languages, is also on display.

A visit to the Anne Frank House brings the book to life, and if not for Miep Gies, the world may never have known this most important of stories.