Mayor Deedee Corradini provoked a glimmer of the spunk that allowed Miep Gies (pronounced Meep Geese) to help hide the family of Anne Frank.
In a story related to an audience of 500 in the University of Utah's Olpin Union ballroom last Saturday night, Gies' traveling companion Cornelis Suijk, international director of the Anne Frank Center, told how the mayor inadvertently mispronounced Gies' name. The mayor called her Miep Geis (rhyming with wise) when she presented Gies with a proclamation in her honor. Said Suijk, "When Miep's name was mispronounced by the mayor, she stood not up. She wanted to inspect the proclamation to see if her name was spelled right!"The 87-year-old woman was visiting Salt Lake City along with Suijk, bringing a message of courage and tolerance. Warren and Mary Elen Shenk, who helped sponsor the program, are planning to bring the "Anne Frank in the World" exhibit to Utah in November.
The petite Dutchwoman, who was born in Vienna, Austria, told the crowd, "People sometimes call me a hero. I don't like it. You don't have to be a special person to help someone."
Gies began working for Otto Frank in 1933 when he fled Germany for refuge in Amsterdam. When his family followed, Gies met Edith Frank and the two daughters, Margot and Anne, who was 4 at the time.
Nine years later when Otto Frank took Gies into his confidence about the plan to hide in a "secret annex," she agreed to help without a second thought. She argued that if we allow terrible things to happen to our neighbors, "there is no guarantee that it won't stop at our door."
A lesser-known fact about Miep Gies and her husband Henk is that in addition to caring for the 11 people hiding in the annex, they also hid a young Jewish student in their apartment in Amsterdam. The young man survived the war but emigrated to America. He has made no attempt to contact the Gies family.
"We should never forget the victims of the Holocaust," said Gies, noting the importance of education. "Stop saying THE blacks, THE Asians, THE whites, THE Jews. Lumping people together makes children believe all members of those groups think and act the same. Lumping people together is racism," she said.
Gies said it was Anne Frank's curiosity that made her special. "She asked me always about everything that went on outside." Gies said that each morning when she entered the annex Anne would say, "Hello Miep, and what is the news?"
Gies quietly said that the one thing she wanted to give Anne and all those in hiding was freedom. "But freedom we couldn't give them. Every year on the 4th of August (the day the family was arrested) I close the curtains on my home and do not answer the phone or the door. I have never overcome that shock," she said.
Miep told about how she went back up into the annex after the police had left with her friends. "When I found (the diary) lying all over the floor in the hiding place, I picked it up in order to give it back to Anne when she returned," Gies said. "I wanted to see her smile and say, `Oh Miep, my diary!' " Gies said that through the diary, Anne "is living on in a most powerful way. That helps me in those many hours of deep grief."
Other participants during the nearly three-hour program included Holocaust survivor Jeannette "Netty" Havas of Ogden; Gies' niece Hanna Meents, Ogden; and Rachael McClinton of Living Voices, who presented "Through the Eyes of a Friend," a theater/ video performance.