Jan Gies, who risked his life to smuggle food to Anne Frank and members of the Dutch underground during World War II, has died at age 87.
Gies died of kidney failure Tuesday at his home in the Dutch capital, the spokeswoman for the Anne Frank Foundation, Teresien da Silva, said Wednesday.He and his wife, Miep, gained renown through Anne Frank's best-selling diary of her two years in hiding under Nazi occupation.
Miep Gies had worked for the pectin trading firm owned by Anne's father, Otto, and smuggled food to the Franks and the other Jews in the camouflaged annex above the firm where the Franks hid.
It was Jan Gies, at the time a municipal welfare department employee, who got the ration coupons his wife needed to buy the extra food for the Franks and the others.
The Gieses hid a Jewish man in their own home, and Jan Gies provided ration coupons to members of the underground.
"Jan was not a person to stand in the limelight, not even amidst all the publicity surrounding Anne Frank," said a foundation statement.
The Gieses shunned publicity to avoid offending those whose similar efforts were not as widely recognized.
But the couple did accept awards from the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem and the B'nai B'rith in New York.
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Tree to get new soil
Amsterdam's City Hall is rushing to the rescue of the 150-year-old chestnut tree that gave Anne Frank her only glimpse of nature while she hid from the Nazis.
City Hall will spend $200,000 to replace the soil around the 100-foot tree, which was contaminated by a heating oil tank leak.
The tree was one of the Jewish diarist's few points of contact with the outside world during her three years in hiding in the rear annex of an Amsterdam canal house.