As you may have already finished reading aisb23's fine diary on Miep Gies, I want to add some thoughts from a personal perspective. I could blather on and on about what makes a hero in this day and age, but I wrote enough of those kinds of essays in high school (they weren't very convincing,nor were they all that inspiring.)
The years go on and I reflect more meaningfully on what it is to be a hero, or in Miep Gies's case, a heroine. I suppose I brood a little too much in addition to meditating on what a hero is. I'm not the kind of person to triumph rocket rides to the moon, and to gloss over bad stuff in favor of a rosy new age picture. So be it. Better to be sober with one's eyes wide open than to go through life dishonestly focusing only on the perceived good, like some of our compatriots on the far right of the political spectrum are apt to do.
My own story. Like many of you I first heard of Anne Frank during junior high school. Her ordeal seems to be a standard part of a junior high school curriculum. Educators correctly surmise that Anne's vivid account of her early teens corresponds well with what teens all over the world may be experiencing: friction with parents, misunderstandings, pettiness, gossip, bruised feelings, romantic feelings awakening.
Anne's story offers a lot more though. It is both beautiful and tragic. On the cusp of becoming a very astute adult full of promise, and on the very cusp of the end of the war in Europe, Anne and her mother died of typhoid at a concentration camp in Poland. She came so close to surviving the war. Her legacy is her diary. It's absolutely precious. A rare testament of the 20th Century for all its achievement and failure. And we have Miep Gies to thank for helping to shelter Anne and her group, and even more so for preserving that essential document, the diary.
Anne Frank is one of those historical figures that sits at the back of many people's minds including my own. In my final year of college, I was planning a trip to Europe upon graduation, and I made a mental note to myself to visit the factory annex that the Franks and their acquaintances hid in during the war.
And so, in the summer of 1995 I found myself cycling around Holland with a friend. The friend was a native of Amsterdam, and on day three of our cycling trip we parked outside the factory annex whose exterior I knew well from countless photos in educational textbooks. My friend Antonin had an appointment to keep, so he cycled off leaving me alone to take the tour of the factory annex.
I walked towards the area where people were lining up for a tour of the place. I was last in line. The line started to move as the group I was in was given permission to enter. Something happened to me in that moment. I looked up at the window which was familiar to me from many photos. I more or less froze, and heard myself say, "I can't go through with this. This is too emotionally wrenching." Anne Frank's domain is sacred. There was still enough of a Catholic in me to recognize a saint, and a sanctified space when I come across one. Call me weird and Irish on that score. Ironic that Anne was Jewish, but then so was Mary Magdalena and a few more prominent saints besides.
All this comes back to me as I read through Miep Gies's obituary in several on-line publications. This Gies quote clobbers me the most:
"There is nothing special about me. I have never wanted special attention. I was only willing to do what was asked of me and what seemed necessary at the time." Much too modest a statement for the woman who preserved those sanctified Anne Frank diaries. Without the diaries, we would know nothing of Anne. We wouldn't have that haunting face of one of the innocents who were trampled under the shadows of the last century.