Miep Gies, the last survivor of the group who helped hide Anne Frank and her family for two years during the Holocaust, has died. She was 100 years old. It was Gies who rescued Anne Frank’s famous diary—which chronicled Anne’s life in hiding from 1942-1944—after the family was found and deported by German police. NPR writes that “Gies gathered up Anne’s scattered notebooks and papers and locked them in a drawer for her return after the war.” Gies, who has been called a true hero by many and was given the title of “Righteous Gentile” by the Israeli Holocaust museum Yad Vashem, put herself in danger to help protect Anne and her family. As Anne Frank’s cousin, Bernd Elias, said, “ ‘If they had caught her, she would have been put in a concentration camp herself.’ ” But Gies, who “tirelessly promoted causes of tolerance” after the diary was published, and, as BBC News reports, traveled to “talk about Anne Frank and her experiences, campaigning against Holocaust denial and refuting allegations that the diary was a forgery,” did not want to be thought of as a hero. NPR states that in her book “Anne Frank Remembered,” Gies recalls going to the police station after the family was arrested “to offer a bribe for the Franks’ release, but it was too late.” Miep Gies will be remembered for her courageous and caring acts. As Anne wrote in her diary, “ ‘It seems as if we are never far from Miep’s thoughts.’ ”
Rescue and Resistance
Facing Today helps educators connect the study of history to issues in our world today. We select current websites, articles, films and blogs that reflect universal themes, such as identity, membership and participation, represented in our scope and sequence. Each media resource is linked to related Facing History materials, including study guides, videos and lessons.
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January 12, 2010
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October 21, 2009
Tracy Kidder’s new book, “Strength in What Remains,” tells the story of Deogratias. In 1994 Deo is a third-year medical student when the Rwandan Genocide spreads to Burundi—his hometown. He is able to escape and travels to America, arriving in New York City with no English and little money. Halfway through the book, Kidder reveals more of Deo’s past. New York Times Book Review writer Ron Suskind describes a particularly powerful scene. As Deo flees yet another refugee camp, he sees a baby “sitting on the lap of his dead mother in a banana grove,” but he can only “stagger away, overcome with despair, and collapse into a heavy sleep.” He is woken by a Hutu woman the next day who “pulls Deo from the brush, discovers he’s a Tutsi and then, at extraordinary risk, saves him from beheading by telling Hutu guards that he’s her son.”
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June 19, 2009In light of World Refugee Day, June 20, The Boston Globe published "The Rescuers," an article sharing the story of Sasha Chanoff and Rose Mapendo. The two joined forces after Sasha and his team from the International Organization for Migration rescued 154 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in late 1999. Mapendo and her family were among those rescued and brought the United States.
Since settling in Phoenix, Mapendo helps raise awareness and money for Chanoff's successful non-profit, Mapendo International, based in Cambridge. Mapendo International has "recently helped resettle more than 100 survivors of a massacre in Congo," and fills "'an important niche'...by identifying refugees who are in danger" and who are not protected by the UNHCR.
