What Happened to The Real Miep and Jan Gies (and What the Miniseries Leaves Out)

Although most people have heard the story of Anne Frank, they may not know the other side of her incredible and sad diary, that of Miep and Jan Gies, responsible for hiding the Frank family, a story portrayed in National Geographic magazine . A little light. Debuting on May 1, 2023, A little light tells the true story of a Dutch couple in the 1930s and 1940sMiep Gies (Bel Powley) and Jan Gies (Joe Cole), who helped the Jewish Frank family hide from the Nazi occupiers from 1942 to 1944.

There have been several films and TV shows about Anne Frank, but almost none about the people who hid her. A little light tells the story of the preparations for the Nazi occupation of Holland, the time the Franks spent in hiding and the consequences when the Nazis discovered their hiding place. The eight-episode miniseries has a 100% success rate Rotten tomatoes and earned a SAG nomination for Powley’s performance. While A little light It takes some liberties, is largely a factual account, and the feel of the series follows the real emotions and motives of that decade.

Miep and Jan Gies were a Dutch couple, close friends of the Frank family,

Miep moved from Austria to the Netherlands during the First World War

Miep Gies and Jan Gies were actually a Dutch couple in real life and a large part of A little light is based on Miep’s 1987 autobiography Anne Frank remembered and the 1995 documentary based on that book (via Smithsonian Magazine). Miep was born in Vienna in 1909 and was originally called “Hermine Santrouschitz”. Because of the destruction caused by the First World War, Hermine’s family sent her to the Netherlands as part of a charity program to care for children affected by the war. She was eventually adopted by her adoptive family and given the Dutch name, “Miep”.

It was in Holland that Miep began working as a secretary for Otto Frank (Liev Schreiber) at his packaging company, Opekta. Otto moved his family from Germany to the Netherlands in 1933, when the Nazis gained power and anti-Semitic hatred began to grow exponentially (via USHMM). Jan also worked at Opekta, and it was there that the two met, later marrying in July 1941, shortly before the Franks went into hiding (via Digital Spy). While working together, Miep and Otto became close, frequently discussing the worsening political crisis in Europe.

The Gies family hid Anne Frank and her family during World War II

The Gieses ended up hiding nine people in their home and Otto’s office

Despite having fled his homeland, Otto Frank was unable to escape the greedy hands of the Nazi apparatus. In May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands and defeated the Dutch army within days. The anti-Semitism that the Franks had fled was now on their doorstep and in an even more vicious state than before. Otto turned over ownership of his company to Jan and another colleague, Victor Kugler (Nicholas Burns), and served as an advisor under new anti-Jewish laws established by the occupying force.

Then, in the spring of 1942, Otto suddenly approached Miep with a request to help his family while they were in hiding.. He didn’t give any more explanations and Miep didn’t ask anything else. She later recalled the moment,

“I didn’t ask any more questions. The less I knew, the less I could say in an interrogation. I knew that when the time was right he would tell me… everything else I needed to know. I didn’t feel curious. I had given my word .”

Shortly after this conversation, Margot Frank (Ashley Brooke), Frank’s eldest daughter, received a warning to report to a labor camp with other Jews. Although it was not fully understood at the time, Margot had just been ordered to submit to a concentration camp. Although the exact nature of these fields was not fully known, most people understood that they were not in a place anyone would want to be. Otto accelerated his plans to hide his family and moved them to a room in his office building at Prinsengracht 263, hidden behind a bookcase.

Miep personally brought Margot into the room and her family quickly joined Margot. Otto’s business partner Hermann van Pels (Andy Nyman), his wife and son, and Dr. Friedrich “Fritz” Pfeffer (Noah Taylor) later join the family in hiding after coming to Miep, trusting her to find a place to hide. The eight refugees in Otto’s offices were kept alive by the combined efforts of Jan, Miep, Kugler, Bep Voskuijl (Sally Messham), Johannes Kleiman (Ian McElhinney) and Johan Voskuijl (who does not appear in the series).

According to Anne Frank’s DiaryAnne said of Miep,

“Miep is like a pack mule, she picks up and carries a lot of things. Almost every day she gets some vegetables for us, she brings them all in shopping bags on her bike.”

Jan was a member of the Dutch Resistance and, as a social worker, was able to move freely around the city, acquiring ration cards and illegal documents when necessary. While Miep was in charge of getting food, Jan visited the family almost every day, bringing them books and news and keeping them company in a dark and lonely time.. Unbeknownst to the Franks, the Gieses were also hiding Kuno van der Horst (Preston Nyman), a young man who refused to declare his support for the Nazis and who was in danger of being deported.

Then, on August 4, 1944, the Nazis arrived at the Opekta offices. How they were informed about the Franks is still a hotly debated question. They quickly found the secret annex and arrested everyone who was hiding, as well as Kugler and Kleiman. The Gieses and Voskuijls were left behind, however. Surprisingly, Miep went straight to the local Gestapo headquarters and offered a bribe to the SS officer in charge.Karl Josef Silberbauer (Daniel Donskoy), to free everyone. Although she was refused, somehow Miep was allowed to leave unmolested. She would never see any of them other than Otto again.

What A Little Light Leaves Out of the Real Story

A little light changes just a few details of the real story

Although many World War II TV shows change certain events for the sake of drama, A little light doesn’t need to change much from the incredible true story. Of course, there are some changes here and there, however. In the series, Jan and Miep’s relationship gets a little more attention, and their courtship involves Jan crashing a date at a bar and Miep adopting a kitten that happens to be Jan’s owner.

In real life, Miep was going through a divorce when she met Jan at work. In fact, Otto helped vouch for the couple to the landlord who had a problem with a married woman living with a single man. A little light also focuses heavily on Jan’s operations as a member of the Dutch Resistance. In reality, no one knows exactly what Jan did for the Resistance, only that his involvement was extensive. Alison Leslie Gold, co-author of Miep’s autobiography, had this to say about Jan (via Independent),

“[He was] like double trouble because you don’t even know what else he did – and you never will [because] he was too modest to tell anyone anything.

In addition to these small creative freedoms, A little light does an admirable job of keeping the show close to the reality of the storynever taking away or adding unnecessarily to the great achievements of everyone involved.

What happened to Miep and Jan Gies after World War II?

Miep and Jan lived long lives

Like many films and TV shows about the Holocaust, the aftermath of that horrific part of human history is almost as important to describe as the lead-up and the event itself. A little light again closely follows the real story of what happened after the war. Otto started to live with the Gieses for some time, the only survivor of the attic. After Otto learned that the rest of his family had died, Miep handed him Anne’s diary. She had never read it out of respect for the young woman and hoping that she would return.

Otto eventually moved to Switzerland and remarried, but remained close to the Gies until his death in 1980. Gies published her memoirs in 1987, after which she began traveling to tell the story of Anne Frank and explain what she saw from Holocaust. The Gieses lived in Amsterdam for the rest of their lives. Jan Gies died in 1993, aged 87, from kidney failure. Miep Gies died in 2010, a month before her 101st birthday. About Jan, Miep spoke on his 100th birthday about the “nameless heroes” who helped Dutch Jews,

“I would like to name one, my husband Jan. He was a man of the resistance who said nothing, but did a lot. People like him existed in the thousands, but they were never heard.”

About herself, Miep was humble, writing in the prologue of her book,

“More than 20,000 Dutch people helped hide Jews and other people who needed to hide during those years. I willingly did what I could to help. My husband did too. It wasn’t enough. There’s nothing special about me. I never wanted attention special. I was only willing to do what was asked of me and what seemed necessary at the time.”

A little light depicts in uncomfortable detail the pain and terror of the Holocaust and the prelude to it. At the same time, it extols the virtues not only of people like Miep and Jan Gies, who risked their lives for others, but also of people like the Franks, who had to trust their friends and neighbors in an impossible way. situation.