Miep Gies
Miep Gies
Hermine Santruschitz, better known as Miep Gies, was one of the Dutch citizens who hid Anne Frank, her familyand four other Jewsfrom 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 eleven, she 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...
NationalityDutch
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth15 February 1909
CityVienna, Austria
You are the heroes. You are the heroes everyday.
I am not a hero. I just did what any decent person would have done.
I don't want to be considered a hero.... Imagine [if] young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary.
Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero?
Too often, when people are in trouble they look for scapegoats.
Children who use the Internet are much better informed than when I was young. Use this to your advantage.
I certainly think that another Holocaust can happen again. It did already occur; think of Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia.
We did our duty as human beings: helping people in need.
I myself am just an ordinary woman. I simply had no choice.
I have never wanted special attention. I was only willing to do what was asked of me and what seemed necessary at the time.
Permanent remorse about failing to do your human duty, in my opinion, can be worse than losing your life.
Real strength is being able to carry on when times are hard,
People should never think that you have to be a very special person to help those who need you.
But even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room.