Eulogy for Miep Gies: ‘There is Nothing Special About Me’

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Miep Gies, who found and safeguarded the diary of Anne Frank after her arrest by the Nazis in 1944, has died at the age of 100.

“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,” she said in the 1998 interview. “Some of the information in them was dangerous.”

The diary was sheltered in Gies’ desk drawer and later turned over to Otto Frank when he returned after the war as the only surviving resident of the annex. Anne died at northern Germany’s Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

Her father published her diary, titled “The Secret Annex,” in 1947.

Despite the legendary hardship she endured during the German occupation, Gies never embraced the label of a hero.

“More than 20,000 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,” she says in the prologue of her memoirs, “Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family.”

“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.”

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45 comments
1 Sharmuta  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 10:39:24pm

Dear, Beautiful Lady- may you be at Peace and Blessed in the next life.

2 Bagua  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 10:39:28pm
3 freetoken  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 10:40:32pm
“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.”

Not surprisingly, this attitude attends to many people who have done great things in their lives.

4 Dark_Falcon  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 10:42:29pm

A salute to a hero who suffered much and survived. Miep, you were braver than most. You saw evil and you dared to fight it. May the Lord receive you unto his mercy, and may you now have the chance meet Anne in Heaven.

5 Killgore Trout  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 10:42:34pm

re: #3 freetoken

Not surprisingly, this attitude attends to many people who have done great things in their lives.

It's a very Zen sentiment.

6 Summer Seale  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 10:42:57pm

I just read it before checking here. I am happy she lived a long, long, life however. And what a life it must have been.

She did the whole world a service and gave a great gift to all of us to remember.

May she rest in peace.

7 Sharmuta  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 10:43:38pm

re: #3 freetoken

It's pretty humbling to think what she did and reflect on her own humbleness.

8 Sharmuta  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 10:45:30pm

She risked her life to save others, and I would not say there was nothing special in that, but God love her for keeping some humility.

9 The Left  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 10:45:32pm

re: #6 Summer

I just read it before checking here. I am happy she lived a long, long, life however. And what a life it must have been.

She did the whole world a service and gave a great gift to all of us to remember.

May she rest in peace.

A reminder to us all that one person really can make a difference, and the greatest acts of courage sometimes consist in simply doing what one knows to be right.

10 Slumbering Behemoth Stinks  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 10:51:28pm
“More than 20,000 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,” she says in the prologue of her memoirs, “Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family.”

This is one of the many reasons why I am disgusted with those from both the left and the right in my country who cry persecution, or make flippant Nazi comparisons, and call anything they disagree with fascism.

Scum, everyone of them, who willfully dilute the hardship, persecution, and absolute evil suffered by those crushed under the boot of the third reich. Fook them all, right in their necks.

And bless the likes Gies. It is for people like her that I hope there is something like an Eternal Reward.

11 Dark_Falcon  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 11:01:07pm

re: #10 Slumbering Behemoth

This is one of the many reasons why I am disgusted with those from both the left and the right in my country who cry persecution, or make flippant Nazi comparisons, and call anything they disagree with fascism.

Scum, everyone of them, who willfully dilute the hardship, persecution, and absolute evil suffered by those crushed under the boot of the third reich. Fook them all, right in their necks.

And bless the likes Gies. It is for people like her that I hope there is something like an Eternal Reward.

So do I. It also worth remembering that Mies not only was brave enough to oppose the Germans but also her own countrymen. While the Dutch had the highest rate of resistance, they also had the highest rate of outright collaboration. Thousands of Dutch men joined the SS, which meant that a decision to hide Jews meant you risked being hunted by people who knew you well. It was a very risky thing to do, but one Mies Gies did with little hesitation. That is part of what makes her story stand out: She knew the risks but never let them stand in the way of her doing what righteous.

12 Bagua  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 11:02:02pm

re: #10 Slumbering Behemoth


And bless the likes Gies. It is for people like her that I hope there is something like an Eternal Reward.

Amen.

13 Stuart Leviton  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 11:03:02pm
"I don't want to be considered a hero," she said in a 1997 online chat with schoolchildren.

"Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary."
- Miep Gies (1910-2010)

"In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man." - Hillel in Pirkei Avot 2:5

14 abolitionist  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 11:03:10pm

Read the Diary in high school. More than anything else, it helped me understand there is evil in the world, but it's not something everyone is born with.

15 Stuart Leviton  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 11:04:36pm

correction: Miep Gies was born on Feb. 15, 1909
// PIMF

16 The Left  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 11:09:26pm

re: #14 abolitionist

Read the Diary in high school. More than anything else, it helped me understand there is evil in the world, but it's not something everyone is born with.

The last lines also have always stayed with me, as a triumph of the human spirit over evil and suffering:

It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe thatpeople are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again." Saturday, 15 July, 1944, pg. 237

"[F]inally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and what I could be, if... there weren't any other people living in the world." Tuesday, 1 August, 1944, pg. 241

17 Stuart Leviton  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 11:09:40pm

And to honor Gies' husband, one of Holland's unsung war heroes:

"He was a resistance man who said nothing but did a lot. During the war he refused to say anything about his work, only that he might not come back one night. People like him existed in thousands but were never heard,"

- Miep Gies from an email to the AP February 2009

18 [deleted]  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 11:15:07pm
19 Slumbering Behemoth Stinks  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 11:40:47pm

re: #18 stevemcg

So what would you do?

...

20 Slumbering Behemoth Stinks  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 11:44:10pm

re: #18 stevemcg

What are you going on about? Your point, I mean. What is it?

21 [deleted]  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 11:50:52pm
22 [deleted]  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 11:55:44pm
23 Slumbering Behemoth Stinks  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 11:58:34pm

re: #21 SteveMcG

I mean, what is your point in commenting on this the way you have? Is it to illustrate the banality of evil? The common thread of disgusting inhumanity in many cultures? Or do you intend to downplay such things?

I admit that I am slow on the uptake here. It's late, and I've had a few. I'm just not getting where you are coming from.

24 Slumbering Behemoth Stinks  Mon, Jan 11, 2010 11:59:48pm

re: #22 SteveMcG

But I wonder how special we really are when we know that millions fought as hard as our grandfathers to murder and enslave millions.

Wait, what?

25 Kruk  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 12:46:14am

Everytime that I feel my faith in humanity weakening, there's the example someone like Miep Gies to remind me of just how much good we are capable of.

26 AK-47%  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 2:52:56am

We also underestimate how popular Fascism was all throught out Europe and the world before WWII revealed its true face.

It also had the appeal of modernism: it portrayed itself as young and dynamic and did offer young people the sort of opportunities that were denied to themselves under the old system.

27 Øyvind Strømmen  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 3:54:08am

re: #14 abolitionist

Can't argue against that. The scary thing is that the Nazis obviously thought they were battling for the good side.

They still do. Just the other day I stumbled across a Swedish neo-fascist singer, Saga (incidentally because a BNP member wrote very positively about her on his blog, so much for their transition). Like Ian Stuart Donaldson in Skrewdriver - who probably was smart enough to do this on purpose - she sings "Tomorrow belongs to us" without any irony. I would not want to link to it in a million years, but here's a post from an interesting Norwegian blog written in English: [Link: thedodologist.blogspot.com...]

So, I checked out some more of Saga's lyrics - apparently she's called "the Madonna of the far right" - and found these lyrics:

Folk and Nation first, and blood - not personal greed
And it's been said before, but still we do not heed
Free your enslaved minds and open up your eyes and see
The strength of your people, one Nation arise!

It is good versus evil, it's the eternal fight
To overcome the darkness we must spreed the light

Fascism. Alive and kicking. And found in plenty on YouTube, including one song with a fan-made (I assume) music video featuring some freak attacking a random Black guy on the street.

I hope we have more people like Miep Gies.

28 AK-47%  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 4:20:47am

I am not too worried that fascism will ever appeal to more than the fringe elements of society. But I do worry that people will just ignore it and forget where its appeal lies.

Right now the attitude in Germany seems to be that they find it a national embarrassment, and just pass legislation to suppress its symbols and manifestations rather than to engage in an open dialogue about what it is about.

29 bj  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 4:23:33am

May her memory be a blessing to us all.

May that there be more like her in the world today - and on Internet blogs!

30 PaxAmericana  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 5:23:20am

A hero.

31 Seltzer123  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 6:16:19am

A true hero. I am sad to see her go.

Here is a link to TED talk from Philip Zimbardo about the psychology of good and evil, and his theory on what it takes to act heroically.

[Link: www.ted.com...]

32 stevemcg  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 6:28:35am

re: #23 Slumbering Behemoth

Not sure why those posts got deleted. I don't think I was out of line. I don't think anything I said would have been "pro" Nazi. I think what I was saying illustrates the tremendous courage af anybody who resisted the Nazis. I was just wondering whether I would have had the courage to stand up to Nazis if I had been there. The fact that so few Germans actively resisted leads me to believe that I probably would have gone along. I'd like to think I'm special, but who among us ever faced a test like that?

33 abolitionist  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 7:03:37am

re: #31 Seltzer123

A true hero. I am sad to see her go.

Here is a link to TED talk from Philip Zimbardo about the psychology of good and evil, and his theory on what it takes to act heroically.

[Link: www.ted.com...]

Phillip Zimbardo: To be a hero, you have to learn to be a deviate.
Lenny Bruce: You need the deviate. You need someone to tell you when you're blowing it."

re: #27 oslogin

Can't argue against that. The scary thing is that the Nazis obviously thought they were battling for the good side.

They still do. Just the other day I stumbled across a Swedish neo-fascist singer, Saga [snip]

Fascism. Alive and kicking. And found in plenty on YouTube, including one song with a fan-made (I assume) music video featuring some freak attacking a random Black guy on the street.

I hope we have more people like Miep Gies.

Had a closer encounter in college. On sofa embracing my date, she says, The only thing wrong with ww2 is the Germans lost. I could be wrong, but I don't think she was trying to kill the mood. She did, of course.

34 wiffersnapper  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 7:08:04am

May this brave soul rest in peace.

35 sffilk  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 7:26:34am

re: #34 wiffersnapper

May this brave soul rest in peace.

Agreed to so strongly.

36 HappyWarrior  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 8:15:04am

She was a hero. People like her risked everything to help Jews during the war which is why it always bugs me to see people minimize the true horror of the Nazis whether it's comparing the Bush or Obama administration to the Nazis.

37 Øyvind Strømmen  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 10:26:12am

re: #33 abolitionist

Had a closer encounter in college. On sofa embracing my date, she says, The only thing wrong with ww2 is the Germans lost. I could be wrong, but I don't think she was trying to kill the mood. She did, of course.

Yikes.

Reminds me of when I shared a house with some other guys while studying. Didn't know them from before, but they seemed like rather okay people, and rent was cheap. After a couple of months, we're watching the evening news. It's a story on a Nazi parade - the real thing, not "I'm not really a fascist, just a national democratic patriot"-style - outside of Oslo.

I think the story was that one of their leaders where he said -amongst other things - that Jews were parasites, this had landed him in some eh... judicial problems, but now the High Court had cleared him, saying he was not guilty of hatespeech (I am against hate speech laws, but what the f?).

Anyway, as we see the Nazis walk past on the screen one of my housemates say: - Hey, I know that guy.

I look at him, and he offers an explanation: - I used to be more radical in my youth. Now I'm just voting for the Progress Party (Norwegian populist right-wing party; democratic, but nationalist and nativist).

I moved out.

38 wee fury  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 10:48:35am

An honorable woman. A good woman. May she rest in peace.

39 sillyallah  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 11:57:29am

An amazing story

40 captdiggs  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 12:16:28pm

There is nothing more honorable than to risk one's life to save another.
She's a shining example of the best in humanity.

41 Jerusalemyte  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 2:30:33pm

NB Miep Gies was an Austrian who fled to Holland because of food shortages after WWI. She was a prime example that stereotyping a group of people is misleading. Stereotyping an individual is insane. Any individual has the ability to make the RIGHT choice when faced with evil. Few people can live up to her standard.

42 lurking faith  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 5:03:33pm

She was one of my heroes.

May perpetual light shine upon her.

43 Red Lion  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 9:23:07pm

Just like a true hero, to minimize her heroism.

44 BartB  Tue, Jan 12, 2010 10:39:18pm

One of the greatest heros of the 20th century. The world needs many more like her.
It's nice that there are still some subjects on which both the right and the left can agree.

45 Flavia  Wed, Jan 13, 2010 10:56:16pm

When this wonderful woman says "I am not a hero," she only proves even more just how much she is one. I would have expected her to say nothing less. But, even better, her sentiment shows the true greatness that is in humanity: not just to be a hero, but to insist that you are "nothing special". Would to G-d she was more right than even she knew!


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