Wartime heroes

Dear Editor,

Amazing stories of heroism during World War II have surfaced.

Miep Gies is a heroine who put her own life in danger to protect Otto Frank, his wife, Edith, and their daughters, Margot and Anne and four other Jews hiding from the Nazis.

They were hidden in an attic of a building in Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

Otto Frank had left Frankfurt, Germany in 1933 and established his pectin and spice business. Jams using fresh fruit were his specialty.

In spite of the fact that the Netherlands was a neutral country on May 10, 1940, Hitler's army began to control its government, food supply and economy.

Miep Gies worked for Otto Frank. She ran his business while he and his family remained in hiding upstairs.

Behind a revolving bookcase was a stairway that went to what Anne called the "Annex" in her diary. They were there 21⁄2 years.

By the time World War II ended in 1945, 75 percent of the Jews residing in the Netherlands were transported to German concentration camps and died there. Two hundred and seventy thousand Dutch citizens had been killed or starved to death.

A bicycle was Miep's transportation. She rode miles in the dark to get food on the "black market" for the Franks and others in the attic.

Someone turned the Franks and their friends into the Germans. Anne, Margot and Edith died in the German death damps. Otto Frank survived. There were narrow escapes for Miep Gies. Helping Jews and obtaining vital supplies for the eight occupants of the attic could result in being given a death sentence or sent to a concentration camp to do slave labor.

She was malnourished and came down with pneumonia. For nine months prior to the arrival of the Allied Forces in the Netherlands, Miep and her husband, Henk, lived on potatoes.

Henk Gies joined the Dutch underground resistance. Both of them were in great danger. (A knock on the door could be the end.)

She hid Anne Frank's diary in a desk drawer. It is now published in many languages.

See "Anne Frank Remembered" by Miep Gies and Allison L. Gold, 1989 Simon-Schuster.

Allison Leslie Gold was a published writer. She helped Miep write "Anne Frank Remembered."

Helen Ruth Arnold,

Trenton, Nebraska