Miep Gies Passes Away at 100
“First, Margot had fallen out of bed onto the stone floor. She couldn’t get up anymore. Anne died a day later.”
Janny Brilleslijper provided an eyewitness account of the deaths of Margot and Anne Frank in Bergen-Belsen.
At the end of October 1944, Anne and Margot are transported from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Bergen-Belsen. Their mother remains behind in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Edith falls ill and dies of exhaustion in January 1945. Auguste van Pels arrives at Bergen-Belsen with another transport of prisoners in November 1944. There she meets Anne and Margot again. Auguste van Pels is only at Bergen-Belsen for a short while and probably dies during a transport of prisoners to Theresienstadt. Anne and Margot succumb to typhus in March 1945, a few weeks before the camp is liberated by the British Army.
“Dearest Mother,
I hope that these lines get to you bringing you and and all the ones I love the news that I have been saved by the Russians, that I am well, am in good spirits, and being looked after well in every respect. Where Edith and the children are I do not know. We have been apart since September 5, 1944. I merely heard that they have been trans-
ported to Germany. One has to be hopeful to see them back well and healthy.”
The first letter from Otto Frank to his mother, February 23, 1945.
Otto Frank is liberated from Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. Shortly before his release, the Nazis evacuate the camp. Prisoners, who can still walk, must go with them. Peter van Pels is among these prisoners. He arrives at the Mathausen concentration camp in Austria at the end of Janaury. The prisoners have to perform heavy labor. Peter van Pels dies of exhaustion on May 5, 1945.
courtesy of the Anne Frank online museum; http://www.annefrank.org/content.asp?pid=160&lid=2
We honor Miep Gies who hid and supplied for Anne Frank, her family and others hiding with them for those 24 harrowing months prior to their subsequent capture, imprisonment and murder right before the end of WWII.
Gies saved Anne's diary before abandoning her home to the Nazi machine. Miep Gies had her own website and died in a nursing home in Amsterdam at the incredible age of 100 today.
Accolades
Mrs Gies was an employee of Anne Frank's father, Otto, who kept them and six others supplied during their two years in hiding in an attic in Amsterdam from 1942 to 1944.
But the family were found by the authorities, and deported. Gies and Otto Frank, next to her, were reunited after the war; Anne Frank died of typhus in the German concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen later.
It was Mrs Gies who collected up Anne Frank's papers, and locked them away, hoping that one day she would be able to give them back to the girl.
In the event, she returned them to Otto Frank, and helped him compile them into a diary that was published in 1947.
It went on to sell tens of millions of copies in dozens of languages.
She became a kind of ambassador for the diary, travelling to talk about Anne Frank and her experiences, campaigning against Holocaust denial and refuting allegations that the diary was a forgery.
For her efforts to protect the Franks and to preserve their memory, Mrs Gies won many accolades.
"This is very unfair," she told the Associated Press.
"So many others have done the same or even far more dangerous work."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7891056.stm February 2009
Janny Brilleslijper provided an eyewitness account of the deaths of Margot and Anne Frank in Bergen-Belsen.
At the end of October 1944, Anne and Margot are transported from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Bergen-Belsen. Their mother remains behind in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Edith falls ill and dies of exhaustion in January 1945. Auguste van Pels arrives at Bergen-Belsen with another transport of prisoners in November 1944. There she meets Anne and Margot again. Auguste van Pels is only at Bergen-Belsen for a short while and probably dies during a transport of prisoners to Theresienstadt. Anne and Margot succumb to typhus in March 1945, a few weeks before the camp is liberated by the British Army.
“Dearest Mother,
I hope that these lines get to you bringing you and and all the ones I love the news that I have been saved by the Russians, that I am well, am in good spirits, and being looked after well in every respect. Where Edith and the children are I do not know. We have been apart since September 5, 1944. I merely heard that they have been trans-
ported to Germany. One has to be hopeful to see them back well and healthy.”
The first letter from Otto Frank to his mother, February 23, 1945.
Otto Frank is liberated from Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. Shortly before his release, the Nazis evacuate the camp. Prisoners, who can still walk, must go with them. Peter van Pels is among these prisoners. He arrives at the Mathausen concentration camp in Austria at the end of Janaury. The prisoners have to perform heavy labor. Peter van Pels dies of exhaustion on May 5, 1945.
courtesy of the Anne Frank online museum; http://www.annefrank.org/content.asp?pid=160&lid=2
We honor Miep Gies who hid and supplied for Anne Frank, her family and others hiding with them for those 24 harrowing months prior to their subsequent capture, imprisonment and murder right before the end of WWII.
Gies saved Anne's diary before abandoning her home to the Nazi machine. Miep Gies had her own website and died in a nursing home in Amsterdam at the incredible age of 100 today.
Accolades
Mrs Gies was an employee of Anne Frank's father, Otto, who kept them and six others supplied during their two years in hiding in an attic in Amsterdam from 1942 to 1944.
But the family were found by the authorities, and deported. Gies and Otto Frank, next to her, were reunited after the war; Anne Frank died of typhus in the German concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen later.
It was Mrs Gies who collected up Anne Frank's papers, and locked them away, hoping that one day she would be able to give them back to the girl.
In the event, she returned them to Otto Frank, and helped him compile them into a diary that was published in 1947.
It went on to sell tens of millions of copies in dozens of languages.
She became a kind of ambassador for the diary, travelling to talk about Anne Frank and her experiences, campaigning against Holocaust denial and refuting allegations that the diary was a forgery.
For her efforts to protect the Franks and to preserve their memory, Mrs Gies won many accolades.
"This is very unfair," she told the Associated Press.
"So many others have done the same or even far more dangerous work."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7891056.stm February 2009
posted by Napoleon at 7:52 PM
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