RIP Miep Gies.


Woman who hid Anne Frank dies at 100
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Gies' Web site reported that she died Monday after a brief illness. The report was confirmed by museum spokeswoman Maatje Mostar, but she gave no details. The British Broadcasting Corp. said she died in a nursing home after suffering a fall last month.

Gies was the last of the few non-Jews who supplied food, books and good cheer to the secret annex behind the canal warehouse where Anne, her parents, sister and four other Jews hid for 25 months during World War II.

After the apartment was raided by the German police, Gies gathered up Anne's scattered notebooks and papers and locked them in a drawer for her return after the war. The diary, which Anne Frank was given on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life in hiding from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944.

Gies refused to read the papers, saying even a teenager's privacy was sacred. Later, she said if she had read them she would have had to burn them because they incriminated the "helpers."

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Anne Frank Helper Miep Gies Dies at 100

Miep Gies helped hide Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis for two years in a secret Amsterdam annex. She also saved Anne's diaries from destruction, allowing the world a glimpse into the day-to-day realities of Jews during World War II. On Monday evening, she died at the age of 100.

She never wanted special recognition for her heroism. In her memoir, Miep Gies wrote "there is nothing special about me."

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Obituary - Miep Gies

She was born Hermine Santrouschitz on February 15 1909 into a German Roman Catholic family in Vienna, but was sent to the Netherlands when she was 11 to escape the food shortages in Austria. The family with which she lived in Leiden gave her the nickname Miep and later adopted her. By the outbreak of the Second World War she was working as an assistant to Otto Frank, the owner of a pectin manufacturing company in Amsterdam.

After the Nazi invasion of 1940, Frank prepared a secret annex behind a swinging bookcase in a room above the firm's offices at 263 Prinsengracht; and in July 1942 the family of four – Otto, his wife Edith and their daughters Margot and Anne – went into hiding, leaving a false trail indicating that they had fled to Switzerland. Soon afterwards they were joined by other Jews, the van Pels family and Miep Gies's family dentist, Fritz Pfeffer – eight people in all.

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Isaiah 56:1-8

1 This is what the LORD says:
"Maintain justice
and do what is right,
for my salvation is close at hand
and my righteousness will soon be revealed.

2 Blessed is the man who does this,
the man who holds it fast,
who keeps the Sabbath without desecrating it,
and keeps his hand from doing any evil."

3 Let no foreigner who has bound himself to the LORD say,
"The LORD will surely exclude me from his people."
And let not any eunuch complain,
"I am only a dry tree."

4 For this is what the LORD says:
"To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
who choose what pleases me
and hold fast to my covenant-

5 to them I will give within my temple and its walls
a memorial and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that will not be cut off.

6 And foreigners who bind themselves to the LORD
to serve him,
to love the name of the LORD,
and to worship him,
all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it
and who hold fast to my covenant-

7 these I will bring to my holy mountain
and give them joy in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house will be called
a house of prayer for all nations."

8 The Sovereign LORD declares—
he who gathers the exiles of Israel:
"I will gather still others to them
besides those already gathered."


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On a related note:
'Operation Attic' aims to rescue Holocaust artifacts

The Ghetto Fighters House last week initiated Operation Attic, a rescue of documents, including letters, diaries and testimonies, and photographs and other artifacts from the Holocaust period that are lying in attics, basements and closets in communities around the world.

The Ghetto Fighters House (its full name is the Itzhak Katzenelson Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Heritage Museum and Study Center) was the first museum commeratingthe Holocaust and Jewish heroism, and was founded in 1949 by survivors who were members of Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot, between Acre and Nahariya.

Operation Attic is a response to the many instances of loss, destruction and disposal of artifacts from the Holocaust period that have historical value, Rami Hochman, director of the museum, said on Monday.

"Lately, we have been hearing about valuable materials that are located in Jewish homes in communities throughout Western and Eastern Europe, Canada and the USA," Hochman said. "One example of document rescue and restoration is the diary of Pola Elster, who was a fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising [in 1943]."

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Meanwhile, Haiti's got problems.


Haiti quake witnesses speak of devastation

Eyewitnesses have spoken of scenes of devastation after a 7.3-magnitude earthquake rocked Haiti, toppling buildings in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Reuters reporter Joseph Guyler Delva said when the quake hit the city "everything started shaking, people were screaming, houses started collapsing".

Mr Delva said he had seen dozens of casualties. "I saw people under the rubble, and people killed. People were screaming 'Jesus, Jesus' and running in all directions." He described the scene as one of total chaos.

Henry Bahn, an official for the US Agriculture Department visiting Haiti, said everybody there was "just totally freaked out and shaken", the Associated Press news agency reported.

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Keep in mind that's on the heels of the 6.5 off the Cali. coast:

The day after a powerful earthquake rocked the Northern California city of Eureka, residents woke today to a mess: toppled chimneys, downed traffic signals and shattered nerves as minor aftershocks continued to rattle windows.

About 30 people visited hospitals for minor injuries, but there were no reports of major injuries caused by the magnitude-6.5 temblor, which struck offshore at 4:27 p.m. about 33 miles southwest of the coastal city of 26,000.