Biography of Miep Gies

Miep Gies at the age of 22

Miep Gies was formally known as Hermine Santrouschitzand and she was born on February 15, 1909. She was born into a poor family that lived in Vienna, Austria.

Miep was born into a family with a father, mother, and baby sister. Even though her family loved her unconditionally, they could hardly afford to feed her, cloth her, and care  for her the way she needed. Her parents made a heart-wrenching decision to put her up for adoption so she could have a better life. At the young age of six, she was adopted into the Nieuwenhuis' family with a father, a mother, four brothers, and one sister. The family that adopted her were not well-off but they could give her the essentials needed to live and with as many children as they had, they still had room in their hearts to love one more child.

After she began to recover from her malnourishment when living in Vienna, she had to learn a whole new language when she moved to Holland. She had to work twice as had as other children her age to be able to keep up with the class, but nevertheless she did not gave up. She also loved to play outside and make new friends with children in the neighborhood.

Otto Frank

Anne Frank

Miep loved learning new things and helping anyone in need. Her passion of helping others is what lead her to protecting the Frank family and a few others into hiding for two years during the Holocaust. She did as many favors as she could to help anyone in need in those troubling times during WWll. Miep and her husband, Henk, were risking their well-being and possibly their lives to help loved ones, friends, and even strangers.

During WWll Miep had broken many laws and did many illegal tasks to help her Jewish friends so they wouldn't be taken away to be put in a work or death camp. During these troubling times, it was very hard for a small family to find enough food to eat but somehow found enough food to be able to feed ten people! She faced many challenges to keep their hiding a secret.

Miep and Henk on their
                       wedding day

Miep and Henk had put all their efforts into taking care of the people they had in hiding. They fed them, clothed them, hid them from the Nazis, and managed to through little parties for people on their birthdays. The Frank family, Van Daan family, and Dr. Dussel

went into hiding on July 5th, 1942 and were in hiding for over two years. Miep and Henk did their best to protect the families in hiding but their best wasn't good enough. On the fateful day, August 4th, 1944, The Nazis had discovered annex (attic) in which they were hiding. Once the Nazis had figured out their secret, they arrested the families and separated most of them by putting them in different wo

Miep and Otto Frank running
the their office

rk/death camps. The Nazis normally would have killed anyone that helped Jews but it just so happened that Miep and one of the soldiers both came from Vienna and because of this he

sympathized with her and let her and Henk live. Because this soldier allowed Miep to live, she was able to salvage Anne's diary and let her story be known to the world.

Before and during the war, Miep had worked for Otto Frank in a jam and sausage factory. She started off as a secretary and worked her way up to running the whole business. In the times which Miep worked, it was very uncommon for a women to run a business or have any say in business decisions.