After reading Anne Frank's diary, this should be the first book you pick up to find out a bit more about the story from the helper closest to the Frank family, Miep Gies. In her own understated and even matter-of-fact way, Miep tells about her life, focusing a great deal on Anne's story, but also giving us some of her own. I really enjoyed learning about Miep and her husband, Jan. I loved finding out about what happened after the Franks were taken away.

My only complaint? At times Miep played things a little too close to the chest. I really would have loved to know more about her and her husband, and a bit more about their life. What was there only whet my appetite for more. She really was an amazing lady.

Simply fascinating, as I knew it would be.
Tears in my eyes as I read that Peter van Daan survived "The Auschwitz Death March"
(as did Elie Wiesel who documented that nightmare experience in the book "Night"),
only to die in Mauthausen on the same day that the camp was liberated by the Americans.

10/10 recommend this book and the show based on it. Miep Gies was truly an incredible woman, and her first-hand account of life under Nazi rule, and her bravery during the war, was fascinating and empowering. I learned about Anne Frank countless times in school growing up and even went to the Anne Frank house, and had no idea half of the amazing things that Miep Gies did.

This book meant a lot to me on many levels. It expanded the original Anne Frank diary story by explaining how the family came to Amsterdam, why they went into hiding, how they were helped and what those helpers faced on the outside. It also gave an amazing account of what the Dutch people experienced before, during and after the NAZI occupation. The personal story of Miep Gies was also incredible. I never knew she came from Austria as a little girl and that her native language was German ... how her Vienna roots saved her and ultimately saved the diary of Anne Frank. Also, this story was very personal to me, as our family lived in and near Amsterdam for a while. We also had to learn the language, put our children in the Dutch schools, then eventually, figure out and learn love the powerful Dutch culture, based on tolerance and respect for everyone. And to have a daughter living in Amsterdam, bicycling down these same streets while I read the book was strange but incredible.

This was so incredibly well written. I don’t think I fully understood how big a part Miep played in the Frank’s story. In Anne Frank remembered, she told her own story without ever detracting from theirs, and told theirs without ever making herself the center of it. As others have said, it was so well done that you can almost imagine it’s going to end differently this time, because you’re reading it from the perspective of someone who had great hope that it would.

Side note, I wish Margot’s diary had also survived. She was a mere footnote most of the time in this account, and I would have loved to know more about her.

The subtitle is more accurate than the main title, but of course Anne and her family are at the heart of this. This is a perfect companion to the Diary--we knew what it was like from Anne's perspective, and now we can see what was happening in the city around her. And it was horrifying. I had no idea about the Hunger Winter of 1945, and how the city came close to starving, and Jewish people who had been hidden away died. No electricity, no coal, no transportation, no food. How would Miep and Jan have fed all 8 in the Annex, plus themselves and the man they were hiding in their own apartment? They nearly starved, just the two of them.

I really liked Miep. She was so non-nonsense and down to earth. The writing is very even-keeled, steady, which seems in line with her personality. Do what needs doing and move on. Very little emotion, until she saw cocoa after the war!

I was struck by how little anyone discussed things. She knew the Franks were worried before she heard about their plans to hide, but she gave them their privacy and never asked. People knew the slow and steady restrictions, ever harder, being forced on their Jewish neighbors, even when the new rules were only printed in the weekly Jewish magazine, but no one spoke of it.

"To their faces we acted as normal as possible, as they did to us...There was nothing we could do to help the situation. We pretended that we did not see their fears and anxieties...It was impossible for me to imagine the strain he, Mrs. Frank, Margot, and Anne were under. Their situation was never discussed, and I did not ask...These laws were succeeding in isolating and separating our Jewish friends from the rest of us."

Over and over, with the Franks, with their neighbors, with their landlord, they nor the Dutch didn't talk about it. Perhaps it wasn't just the laws. But Miep refused to join a Nazi women's group and told them exactly why, which nearly got her deported, and on the first day that Jewish Dutch were required to wear stars, Christian Dutch wore them too, or wore yellow flowers and went out of their way to show them they weren't alone. And of course, the first time Miep heard of the hiding plan, she did not hesitate to agree to take care of them for the duration. People step up in emergencies, but it's harder to get people to step up to prevent those emergencies.

Miep commented, "During the occupation, there had been just two kinds of Dutch people: those who collaborated and those who resisted. Political and religious and class differences had been forgotten. It was simply we Dutch against our German oppressor. After the liberation, the unity quickly disappeared and people again divided into groups and factions that were at odds with each other. Everyone returned to his old ways, to his old class, to his own political group. People had changed less than I would have thought."

I hadn't realized that Miep collected money and tried to buy back everyone's freedom. Or that she and Jan (Henk in Anne's diary) lived together before they were married, which she admitted was not usually done. Or that she was Viennese, brought over for health reasons after WW1, which is ultimately how she avoided arrest--the officer who led the raid was also from Vienna and was taken aback when she spoke German to him. Mrs. Frank's mother died just before they went into hiding--did they intend for her to hide with them? I also hadn't realized that 20,000 Dutch were hiding Jewish people or other Dutch who refused to sign Nazi agreements. That's an incredible number--and Miep's husband helped place a number of them. What a family.

I haven’t been reading much since our world has been disrupted by COVID-19. Too distracted, really exhausted at night, waking hours consumed by anxiety and trying to keep things as normal as possible for my daughter. I started THE OLD DRIFT ages ago but took a pause about a third of the way through to try to find something else that grabbed me. This was it.
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My mom and I traveled to Amsterdam last year, and around then I re-read THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK. We visited the museum and my mom recommended ANNE FRANK REMEMBERERED, Miep Gies’ account of wartime Amsterdam and how she helped the Frank family while they were in hiding. It’s compelling. She portrays herself as an ordinary lady who did the right thing. She was brave, and loyal, and became a hero.
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Miep’s story made me appreciate so much about what the citizens of Amsterdam went through during WWII, and put in perspective our comparatively small challenges during this quarantine. We aren’t starving. We don’t have to fear being murdered by Nazis. We aren’t going to be separated from our families. We have books, and TV, and all sorts of things to keep us occupied and engaged. I’m feeling grateful.
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Five stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.
Format: Hardcover, borrowed from my mom
Read for:
✅ 2020 Reading Women Challenge, Prompt 6. Nonfiction by a woman historian
✅ 2020 PopSugar Reading Challenge Prompt 5. A book set in a city that has hosted the Olympics

As a young girl, like many students I read Anne Frank's Diary. Why did I not read Miep's book? I have no good excuse. It was remarkable.

This was an indispensable account of the Frank family, written by the brave secretary of Anne's father, Otto Frank. It was Miep Gies and her husband, Jan, who hid Otto Frank, and his wife and daughters, as well as another family.

This firsthand account of everything Miep, Jan, and Otto's coworkers endured during the two years they hid eight Jewish individuals from the Nazi party, and what happened after Otto Frank and his family were arrested and taken to concentration camps.

It was a privilege learning about the details of how Miep met Otto Frank. This book provided an entirely different angle from which to get to know about each individual, and I am so grateful to have finally read this. To be quite honest, I'm rather embarrassed to have learned so much about the second World War in high school, college, and as an adult in recent decades - and yet I hadn't read Miep's publication until now.

If you haven't yet read it, and would like to get to know more about the Frank family, their friends, and the woman who took care of them in hiding (and remained close friends with Otto Frank for the remainder of his life, after he was released from the concentration camp at the end of the war), I highly recommend giving this a bit of your time. 4.5 stars easily. ~

If a person has heard Miep Gies speak, this book is extactly like her speech. She may have a co-author, but her voice comes though loud and clear.

Like the documentry about Anne Frank, this book does much in dispelling some of the myths that surrond the Frank family and thier assoicates. In many ways, Otto and Anne Frank still dominant the book. In part, this is because Gies had a closer relationship to Mr. Frank, and in part because of the popularity of Anne Frank's diary. Gies, however, brings a different prespective to several of the attic residents. The Van Danns become more just Anne's fighting couple and are shown to be as intelligent and as generous as the Franks. Gies points out that Anne's diary was lucky enough to surive, while Margot's was not. She shows that Edith Frank was willing, encouraged, her husband and children to escape to America, even if it meant living her behind.

Gies expresses regret over how some of the residents, in particular Dussel, where protrayed in various film versions.

Additionally, Gies presents a good look at Amsterdam and the Netherlands during the war. From the mention of Rotterdam's destruction at the bombs of the Germans to Radio Orange to the struggle to find food, Gies paints a picture of life without getting bogged down in details. Even today, one can still see the Dutch anger at the Germans as evidenced by the party Rotterdam threw when Amsterdam's Ajax beat a German team for the Champions League crown.

The reader is also given examples of the fates other Jewish residents, some who managed to go into hiding, some who did not. Gies and her husband, Jan (Henk), were far more heroic than any read of the diary knows.

There is no hubris in the story, and one has to wonder if Gies wrote because of her desire to set the record straight and to prove to all the slanderers that the diary recorded real life. The epilogue is one of the few places were she really sounds angry about those people.

Recently, historians have pointed out that stories such Gies' makes it sound as if the Dutch were far more subversive and saved more Jews than they actually did. Gies doesn't claim to speak for her country. In fact, she makes it quite clear that there was a large amount of betrayal going on, especially when food became hard to get. She mentions problems about what to do when someone in hiding dies.

While she never states the fact that she didn't have a child during the war, one wonders if the childless statue of Gies and her husband made it easier for them to risk helping people. She never says, but the question hangs in the shadows of some passages.

This isn't to miminalize her bravery or the bravery of the other helpers who did so much because it was the right thing to do. It simply, like the book, makes us consider the wider picture.

9 de 10*

Anne Frank terá ficado conhecida pelos piores motivos. A menina que viveu fechada com a sua família no edifício que baptizaram de “Anexo”, escondidos dos nazis durante a ocupação da Holanda por parte das tropas de Hitler. Sem um final feliz, Anne Frank deixou como legado o seu diário, o caderno com que ocupou parte do seu tempo livre dentro do anexo. O diário foi transformado em livro e é mundialmente conhecido, assim como a história da pequena Anne Frank.

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I decided to read Anne Frank as an independent reading book. This book is basically about a girl named Anne and she has to go into hiding with her family. She is struggling to survive. Soo if you want to find out more you should read this book. She has an external conflict with the Nazi's because she is hiding from them and is sort of fighting against them because by them hiding they aren't succeeding in catching all the people.
I have an text-to-self connection. I had a relative that probably got captured in the war. That relative was russian and he got captured in Russia. It was pretty sad. I found out recently and my aunt found it out because the relative didn't send any more letter during the war. So after the war she still didn't get any letters so probably that person died in the war.
I give this book ***** stars. I gave this book 5 stars because it really showed depth. It told her feelings and the details.It is a shame that these people died. So it really explained how this war was. I suggest this book to people who are interested in the Holocaust.

I have read Anne’s diary as well as other books about her life, but THIS!!!! It is a wonderful read. Of course, I know how it ends, but I can’t help hoping that THIS time, the ending will be different. Anne, thank you for your legacy. Miep, oh, you were the very best friend. ❤️