Frank Anne - Anne Frank remembered: the story of the woman who helped to hide the Frank family

Simon & Schuster Paperbacks

A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 1987 by Miep Gies and Alison Leslie Gold

Afterword copyright 2009 by Miep Gies and Alison Leslie Gold

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Paperbacks Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

This Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition February 2009

SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Designed by Edith Fowler

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Gies, Miep, 1909.

Anne Frank remembered

1. Gies, Miep, 1909. 2. Righteous Gentiles in the HolocaustNetherlandsAmsterdamBiography. 3. Frank, Anne, 19291945. 4. Holocaust, Jewish (19391945)NetherlandsAmsterdam. 5. Amsterdam (Netherlands)Ethnic relations. I. Gold, Alison Leslie.

II. Title.

DS135.N5A536 1987

940.S3'15'03924

8625991

ISBN-13: 978-0-671-54771-4

ISBN-10: 0-671-54771-2

ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-9885-5 (pbk)

ISBN-10: 1-4165-9885-5 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-4391-2747-6 (eBook)

Monday, 8 May 1944

It seems as if we are never
far from Mieps thoughts.

ANNE FRANK

Thanks to:

Jan Gies, our backbone then and always, Paul Gies for his help, Jacob Presser for excellent reference material, Jan Wiegel for use of photos, Anne Frank Stichting, Amsterdam and Anne Frank-Fonds/Cosmopress, Genve for photos, repoductions, permissions. Doubleday & Co., Inc. for permission to reprint excerpt from Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, copyright 1952 by Otto H. Frank; Meredith Bernstein for enthusiastic agenting; Bob Bender for skillful editing; Sharon H. Smith for special help freely given; and Lily Mack for inspirationathough her youth was destroyed by the Nazis, her capacity for seeing beauty everywhere has not been diminished.

PART ONE
REFUGEES

PART TWO
IN HIDING

PART THREE
THE DARKEST DAYS

I am not a hero. I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did or moremuch moreduring those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the hearts of those of us who bear witness. Never a day goes by that I do not think of what happened then.

More than twenty thousand Dutch people helped to hide Jews and others in need of hiding during those years. I willingly did what I could to help. My husband did as well. It was not enough.

There is nothing special about me. I have never wanted special attention. I was only willing to do what was asked of me and what seemed necessary at the time. When I was persuaded to tell my story, I had to think of the place that Anne Frank holds in history and what her story has come to mean for the many millions of people who have been touched by it. Im told that every night when the sun goes down, somewhere in the world the curtain is going up on the stage play made from Annes diary. Taking into consideration the many printings of Het Achterhuis (The Annexe)published in English as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and the many translations that have been made of Annes story, her voice has reached the far edges of the earth.

My collaborator, Alison Leslie Gold, said that people would respond to my remembrances of how these sad events all happened. Since everyone else is now dead, there remain only my husband and me. I am writing of these events as I remember them.

In keeping with the spirit of the original version of Annes diary, I have chosen to continue using some of the names that Anne invented for many of the persons involved. Anne made up a list of pseudonyms which was found among her papers. Apparently she intended to disguise the identities of people in case anything of her hiding experiences was published after the war. For example, my nickname is Miep, a very common Dutch nickname that Anne didnt bother to change. My husbands name, Jan, Anne changed to Henk. And our last name, Gies, became Van Santen.

When the diary was first published, Mr. Frank decided to use Annes names for everyone other than his own family, out of respect for peoples privacy. For reasons of consistency with Annes diary, as well as privacy, I have done the same, using either variations of Annes made-up names or names Ive made up for some people not mentioned in Annes diary. The notable exception is that this time I have used my real last name, Gies. The true identities of all these people are carefully documented in the official archives of the Netherlands.

In some instances, more than fifty years have passed, and many details of events recorded in this book are half-forgotten. I have reconstituted conversations and events as closely as possible to the way I remember them. It is not easy to recall these memories in such detail. Even with the passing of time, it does not get easier.

My story is a story of very ordinary people during extraordinarily terrible times. Times the like of which I hope with all my heart will never, never come again. It is for all of us ordinary people all over the world to see to it that they do not.

MIEP GIES

IN 1933, I LIVED with my adoptive parents, the Nieuwenhuises, at Gaaspstraat 25, sharing a small, cozy attic room with my adoptive sister, Catherina. Our quarter was a quiet area of South Amsterdam known as the River Quarter because the streets were named after Dutch and other European rivers whose lower courses flowed through the Netherlands to the sea, like the Rhine, the Maas, the Jeker. In fact, the Amstel flowed practically into our own backyards.

This section had been built up during the 1920s and early 30s when large, progressive corporations had built great blocks of apartments for their members with the help of government loans. We were all quite proud of this forward-looking treatment of ordinary working people: comfortable housing, indoor plumbing, tree-filled gardens in the rear of each block. Other big blocks were built entirely by private firms.

Actually, our quarter wasnt altogether quiet. Almost always, lively children filled the air with shouts and laughter; if they werent playing games, they were whistling upward to call their friends out to play. A friendship included a one-of-a-kind tune whistled loudly to call the friend and identify who was downstairs. Children were always in each others company, charging off in little packs to the Amstelpark swimming pool, or perhaps speaking in singsong as they walked to and from school in bunches. Dutch children, like their parents, learned faithfulness in friendship very young, and would just as quickly turn implacable if any wrong was done to a friend.