October Ovation: Miep Gies

Imagine if one day your boss walked up to you and said, "Hey, I'm wondering if you'd be willing to help me and my family out with something? Something secret." Before you have a chance to answer, he holds up his hand like a stop sign and adds, "Wait. You should know that if you get caught, you'll be severely punished, thrown in prison or deported or even shot."

This is, very roughly speaking, what Otto Frank presented to his four office employees around the spring of 1942 in Amsterdam. He asked them to hide him and his family, the van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer from the Nazis in a sealed-off part of the office building.

Miep (rhymes with keep) Gies (rhymes with peace) said, "Of course."

This was her reasoning: "My decision to help Otto was because I saw no alternative. I could foresee many sleepless nights and an unhappy life if I refused. And that was not the kind of failure I wanted for myself. Permanent remorse about failing to do your human duty, in my opinion, can be worse than losing your life."

Miep's job was buying the vegetables and the meat. In order not to arouse suspicion, she'd make several trips a day to the market, never carrying more than one bag. Miep also brought news, awful news, of the outside world to the people in the Secret Annex. And she spent a night in hiding, because she wanted to understand what the exiled people were experiencing. She helped for two years.

On August 4, 1944, an anonymous informant told the Gestapo about the hidden people. After they were deported. Miep gathered up Anne's diary and hung onto it until after the war at which time she gave it to Frank Otto.

From left to right, front row: Miep Gies, Otto Frank, and Bep Voskuijl. Back row: Johannes Kleiman, Victor Kugler (October 1945.)

All the helpers were brave and selfless.

In Miep's words: "It seemed perfectly natural to me. I could help these people. They were powerless, they didn't know where to turn. I always emphasize that we were not heroes. We did our duty as human beings: helping people in need."
Sounds extremely heroic to me.

The following bloggers have graciously posted about a person or people they admire. Please pay them a visit.

Stacy Nyikos, a fellow 2k8er
Ellen Booraem, a fellow 2k8er
Maureen McGowan
Elizabeth--About New York
Jason--Scribblings of a Madman
Becky Levine
The Adventures (and Misadventures) of Amy
Sandy--Peaceful Heart Stained Glass
Gabe--Gabe's Meanderings
Shari Green
Debra--From Skilled Hands
Patti--Welcome to the Patti-O
Patti Abbott--pattinase
Beth Yarnell
Travis--One Word, One Rung, One Day
Through the Tollbooth
The Tainted Archive
Patti's People and Places
Larramie--Seize A Daisy who has put up a post as well as linked to all the October Ovation participants. Thank you.

Sources:
http://www.annefrank.org/content.asp?pid=280&lid=2
http://www.annefrank.org/content.asp?PID=110&LID=2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miep_Gies
http://teacher.scholastic.com/frank/tscripts/miep.htm