Miep Gies

Hermine Santruschitz (15 February 1909 – 11 January 2010), better known as Miep Gies, was one of the Dutch citizens who hid Anne Frank, her family and four other Jews from the Nazis in an annex above Anne's father's business premises during World War II. She was Austrian by birth, but in 1920, at the age of only eleven, was taken in as a foster child by a Dutch family to whom she became very attached. Although she was initially only to stay for six months, this stay was extended to one year because of frail health, after which she chose to remain with them, living the rest of her life in the Netherlands. In 1933 she began working for Otto Frank, a businessman who had moved with his family from Germany to the Netherlands in hopes of sparing his family Nazi persecution because they were Jewish. Miep became a close friend of the family and was a great support to them during the two years they spent in hiding. She retrieved Anne Frank's diary after the family were arrested and kept the papers safe until Otto Frank returned from Auschwitz and learned of his daughter's death.