Woman Who Hid Anne Frank from Nazis, Dies at 100

by Jane Doe, Staff Writer

Jan 12, 2010 08:54 AM

The woman who risked her own life by hiding Dutch Jewish teenager Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis, Miep Gies, has died. She would have been 101 years old next month.

The Anne Frank Museum and Gies' own Web site announced her death Monday. No cause of death was given.

Gies worked for Anne Frank's father, Otto, when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. He asked Gies to help hide his family in an empty section of the company warehouse. She and others provided food, books and companionship to the Franks while they hid for two years.

Informers tipped off the Nazis, who arrested the family and shipped them off to concentration camps, where Anne Frank died months later.

Gies gathered up Anne Frank's papers and notebooks after the family's hiding place was discovered in August 1944. Gies kept the girl's diary and later gave it back to Otto Frank, the only one of his family to survive the Nazi concentration camps.

Anne Frank's diary later became an international best-seller translated into dozens of languages.

Gies wrote a book in 1987 called Anne Frank Remembered. She spent her later years speaking out against racism and Holocaust deniers. She always denied being a hero, saying she only did what she had to do.