Who was Miep Gies?

Hermine "Miep" Gies née Santrouschitz answering phone calls for the company
(15 February 1909 – 11 January 2010) was instead of just making the jam – she was
a Dutch citizen who hid the Frank family lucky to have such a stable job.
from the Nazis during WWII. Along with
four other Dutch Jews, she secured a
secret room in the annex above Otto
Frank’s business premises and this safe
place lasted 2 years. She died aged 100.

As a child, Miep was very weak and her

family was struggling to make ends
meet after the first world war. So, at 11,
she was accepted into a programme
aiding Austrian working class children by
taking them to the Netherlands for a few
months and letting them gain health. It
was with her foster family she improved
and was given her nickname – despite
only planning to stay 3 months, she
remained there for the rest of her life.

Miep at work in 1936

At the job she had before Otto Frank,

Miep had met a man called Jan Gies,
who she stayed in touch with and later
married on July 16, 1941.

Miep in 1925

When she was 18, Miep became an

office assistant and, after 6 years, was
rendered unemployed due to the Great
Depression in 1933. Looking for jobs, she
found Otto Frank who was in the jam
business, and, him being Austrian, they
became fast friends in German. She was
quickly moved up to a higher position
 Who was Miep Gies?
When Otto Frank asked Miep to help
hide his family and the van Pels in the
rear annex of his office building, Miep
immediately agreed. Miep’s husband
agreed to become the face of the
company to cover for Otto, who was still
in charge from the safety of the annex.
Miep was in charge of the shopping for
the two families and would keep them
company, bringing library books and the
latest news. Miep was also keeping safe
a student who’d refused to sign the
German oath of allegiance; she was
Anne Frank’s diary
feeding 11 people in total, under the
cover of only two. This meant that all 11
were constantly ill fed for those two
years.

On Friday August 4, 1944, Miep, Bep and

Johannes Kleiman were seated at their
desks in their shared office when Miep
looked up to see a man holding a gun.
Someone had betrayed them. They
were arrested, but Miep was allowed to
stay in the office “out of personal
sympathy” because the officer turned
out to be from Miep’s birth town in
Vienna. When the hiders were deported
to concentration camps, only Otto Frank
would survive.

She found and kept Anne's diary after

Anne Frank was found and sent away by
the Nazis. Although Gies did not read the
diary (as she gave it to Otto Frank
immediately after recovering it from the
annex and thought it would be rude to
read), it has become very successful
worldwide.