Tuesday, January 12, 2010

1562...A Hero Dies, A True Hero

If there is a heaven it has just received one more Angel.

The Associated Press reports that Miep Gies died in Amsterdam Monday from a neck injury suffered when she fell last month. She was 100 years old.

Without Mrs. Gies, the story of Anne Frank and her famous diary illustrating the angst of a teenage girl and her family during the horror of the greatest and most successful pogrom the world has ever seen, the Holocaust, would not have come to light.

Mrs. Gies was one of the helpers that tried to keep the Frank family safe from the Dutch police and the Nazi's during the dark days of the forties. Sadly, they were not successful and Miss Frank died of typhus at age 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945. The rest of her family also were murdered by the Germans and their allies with the exception of her dad, Otto Frank, who, upon his return home after the war, met up with Mrs. Gies and received his youngest daughter's diary.

"Otto Frank published it in 1947. The Diary of Anne Frank was the first popular book about the Holocaust and has been read by millions of children and adults around the world in 70 languages.

The diary was the basis for two other popular art works: a 1959 movie that won three Oscars, and a Pulitzer Prize winning play."

Anne Frank would be 80 years old today.

WFDS

No comments:

Post a Comment