Gies became part of legend on August 4, 1944, the day Anne Frank and most of her family were reported to the authorities in an act of betrayal and deported from their hideaway in an 17th century home on Amsterdam’s historic canals.

After the Franks were gone, Gies gathered some of their belongings, including a small red-chequered diary, and kept them hidden in a drawer for the remainder of the war. In June 1945 she handed the book over to Otto Frank, Anne’s father.

Gies, born Hermine Santruschitz, came to the Netherlands as an anaemic, malnourished 11-year-old from her native Vienna, hoping to recuperate while living with a Leiden foster family. Not only did Gies regain her health, she felt so at home in the Netherlands that her parents agreed to let her stay here.

She later moved to Amsterdam, where she applied for a job at Opecta, Otto Frank’s conserve business. Gies and her – then prospective – husband’s family were close to Otto.

When Frank’s oldest daughter was called on for forced labour in Germany in July of 1942, the Frank family decided to go into hiding. Otto knew Miep would come to his aid if need be. “Once or twice in a lifetime, people exchanges glances that cannot be described in words. We exchanged such a glance,” Gies said later.

On June 3, 1945, their eyes met again. “We faced each other silently until Otto Frank finally said, in a calm voice: ‘Miep, Edith won’t be coming back. But I have good hopes for Margot and Anne.’ ‘Yes, good hope,’” I parroted, trying to sound encouraging. “Why don’t you come in?’” Frank ended up staying with the Gies family for seven years, after which he moved to Switzerland.

Miep and her husband Jan shunned publicity until 1987, when she co-authored the book Anne Frank Remembered, with the American writer Allison Leslie Gold.

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