Anne Frank Diary Protector Dies

On 11 January 2010, Miep Gies, who helped keep the diary of Anne Frank from falling into Nazi hands, has died at the age of 100. She was the last surviving member of a group of Dutch citizens who hid the Frank family of four, plus four others, in a secret annexe in Amsterdam between July 1942 and 4 August 1944 when they were arrested by the Gestapo and Dutch police after being betrayed by an informant. Gies and Bep Voskuijl avoided being arrested on that day and found the 14-year-old Anne’s Papers.

In the diary Anne chronicles the two years in hiding, including her fears and her feelings towards her family and the others in the annexe, including her friend, Peter van Pels.

“I didn’t read Anne’s diary Papers. … It’s a good thing I didn’t because if I had read them I would have had to burn them,” Gies said in the 1998 interview. “Some of the information in them was dangerous.” The diaries included some of the names of the Dutch helpers.

She returned the Papers to Anne’s father. Otto, after the war. Otto was the only surviving member of the annex and published her diary as The Secret Annex in 1947. Anne died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.