Woman who hid Anne Frank dies, aged 100

MIEP Gies, the woman who helped hide Anne Frank and recovered her diary, has died at the age of 100.

13 January 2010, 7:40 am

Miep Gies is honoured by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Rabbi Marvin Hier in Los Angeles in 1994. Actress Whoopi Goldberg was also at the ceremony. Photo: JTA

AMI EDEN

NEW YORK — Miep Gies, the woman who helped hide Anne Frank and recovered her diary, has died at the age of 100.

Gies, who died in the Netherlands on January 11, was the last surviving member of the small group that hid Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis.

After the arrest of the Frank family by the Gestapo in 1944, Gies returned to the attic where they had been hiding and found the diary.

“Miep Gies was a beacon of light during the dark days of the Holocaust,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

“Without her, the world would never have known about Anne Frank and hundreds of millions of people would never have been inspired by her story.”

JTA