Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family

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The Last Secret of the Secret Annex: The Untold Story of Anne Frank, Her Silent Protector, and a Family Betrayal. He had just moved to Amsterdam from Frankfurt and his wife, Edith, and daughters, Anne and Margot, had yet to join him. The months that followed the arrest brought fuel and food shortages, resulting in a famine known as the Hunger Winter. As well as an epilogue from Miep Gies, who hid them for two years, it features new theories surrounding their betrayal, revelations about the pressure put on their helpers by the Nazi party and the startling discovery that the family applied for visas to the US that were never granted. Aside from Otto himself, Gies arguably deserves the most credit for bringing Anne’s diary to a global audience.

Many, what I didn't know was how Ann and her family came to be in the Attic and who would sacrifice so much, their lives, to hide them. Thirteen years after Gies’ death at age 100, a limited series from National Geographic that’s streaming on Hulu and Disney+, focuses on the life of Anne’s protector. Everyone believed that the quickest way for a child to learn the Dutch language was to go to a Dutch school.

But then, on Friday morning 4 August 1944, Dutch police officers, headed by SS-Hauptscharführer Karl Josef Silberbauer, unexpectedly raided Prinsengracht 263. Like thousands of unsung heroes of the Holocaust, they risked their lives each day to bring food, news, and emotional support to the victims. Gies was interviewed about her memories of hiding the Frank family for the 1995 documentary film Anne Frank Remembered by Jon Blair. Countless were the times she told students her stories about the Secret Annex and her memories of Anne.

The Franks had no idea that the Gieses were also sheltering Kuno van der Horst, a young man whose refusal to declare his loyalty to the Nazis meant he could be sent to Germany as a forced laborer.Neither one came back to live with us, so by the time the war ended I lived with just Mother, Father, and Grandmother. When it became clear in mid-July 1945 that Anne had died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Miep handed the diary papers to Otto.

In 1933, I Lived with my adoptive parents, the Nieuwenhuises, at Gaaspstraat 25, sharing a small, cozy attic room with my adoptive sister, Catherina.Miep Gies gives far more insight and information into the story of all who were hiding in the annexe. When the warehouse laborers who worked below the annex went home for lunch or the end of the workday, the helpers, most of whom worked in the office, visited those in hiding, bringing supplies and news from the outside world.

She treated us almost as though we were two movie stars rather than two perfectly ordinary Dutch people who had simply married. In spring 1942, Otto approached Gies with a request, asking if she would help take care of his family while they were in hiding. For the millions moved by Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, here at last is Miep Geis’s own astonishing story. Reissued in the year of Miep Gies' 100th birthday, this international bestseller includes a brand-new afterword by the author. Obviously the one big issue with a book like this is you know how it ends but Gies and Gold don’t play to that.Ms Gold and the couple agreed to collaborate on the book — which seems to somehow still surprise the author to this day, since she was a veritable stranger — and, in the process, became very close friends. I thought it would be a minor follow-up on Anne Franks diary, but it is a remarkable story, told with no sentiment or hint of personal bravery, about what it was like to be helping Jews in hiding while the Nazis were trying to completely wipe them out. In Vienna, there were old buildings, not in good condition, built around central courtyards and broken up into many apartments filled with working people.