Miep Gies - Hiding The Families

Hiding The Families

With her husband Jan Gies, and the other Opekta employees, Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, and Bep Voskuijl, Miep Gies helped hide Otto and Edith Frank, their daughters Margot and Anne, Hermann and Auguste van Pels, their son Peter, and Fritz Pfeffer in several upstairs rooms in the company's office building on Amsterdam's Prinsengracht from 6 July 1942 to August 4, 1944. In an interview, Miep said she was glad to help the families hide because she was extremely concerned about them seeing what was happening to the Jews in Amsterdam. Every day, she saw trucks loaded with Jews heading to the railway station from where the trains left for concentration camps. She did not tell anyone, not even her own parents, about the people in hiding whom she was assisting.

When purchasing food for the people in hiding, Miep avoided suspicion in many ways, for example by visiting several different suppliers a day. She never carried more than what one shopping bag could hold or what she could hide under her coat She kept the workers at Opekta from being suspicious by trying not to enter the hiding place during office hours. Her husband also helped her by providing ration cards which he had obtained illegally. By visiting several grocery shops and markets a day, Miep developed a good feeling for the supply situation.

At their apartment, a short bicycle ride away from the secret annex, Miep and her husband (who belonged to the Dutch resistance), also hid an anti-Nazi university student.