Miep

Here is Miep, in the late 1990s, describing that moment:

Peace, order and good government, eh?: January 2010 Archives 2010

Only after Otto Frank received confirmation that Margot and Anne had died at Bergen-Belsen did Miep open the drawer and hand Anne's papers over to her father.

Peace, order and good government, eh?: January 2010 Archives 2010

Like the other helpers Bep and Jan and Mr Kugler and Mr Kleiman, Miep brought life and spirit and hope as well as provisions to the eight trapped in the secret annex.

Peace, order and good government, eh?: January 2010 Archives 2010

Everyone who has read that amazing book knows Miep as a young woman of exceptional courage and common sense who took danger in her stride and did the right thing because it was there to be done -- and then also because she clearly cared for the people she was trying to save.

Peace, order and good government, eh?: January 2010 Archives 2010

Miep gathered them up, took them back to her office, and kept them there unread for a year.

Peace, order and good government, eh?: January 2010 Archives 2010

Miep has been a heroine for millions who met her first in Anne Frank's diary of those years in hiding, an account that is often unsparingly, painfully honest about Anne's family, their companions in hiding, and herself, a teenager just coming to adult awareness in extreme circumstances.

Peace, order and good government, eh?: January 2010 Archives 2010

Nicole won numerous awards for her charity work, including, in 2009, the Diana award, for young people who have made an outstanding contribution to their communities, and the Anne Frank/Miep Gies award, which recognises courage in the face of adversity.

Nicole Dryburgh obituary 2010

Miep Gies appeared at Temple Judea in Manhasset, Long Island in the autumn of 1988.

Lynn Grossman: Miep Gies and Nitta Lee 2010

Anne loved her -- like all the residents of the Achterhuis and their helpers, Miep lives on in Anne's words and in her own life after the war, when Miep and Jan took Otto Frank, the only one of the eight to survive the camps, in to live with them, and like Otto became campaigners for Holocaust education.

Peace, order and good government, eh?: January 2010 Archives 2010

On the day that Nazi and Dutch police raided the Achterhuis and arrested those in hiding, as well as Mr Kugler and Mr Kleiman, Miep slipped upstairs after they had gone and found Anne's diaries and loose pages flung on to the floor by the German officer who'd used the case she kept them in for looted valuables.

Peace, order and good government, eh?: January 2010 Archives 2010