Episode 265: Miep Gies, Part Two

We left Miep right after she decided, with zero hesitation, that she would do whatever was necessary to keep the people in the attic safe as they hid from the Nazi persecution of the Jewish population.

For the next several years Miep would risk her life daily to fulfill that promise, and her Miep’s story is quite documented. One of the most important things she did was to collect from the annex and keep safe the writing collection of a 15-year-old Anne Frank until after the war. We know how she, Jan, and the other four helpers–Bep Voskuijl, Victor Kugler, Johan Klieman, and Johan Voskuijl– kept the Frank and Van Pel’s families, and Fritz Pfeffer safe for two years in the attic. In the slightly wider world, we know how the Nazi government captured, transported to concentration camps in other countries, tortured, and slaughtered millions of mostly Jewish people but also resisters, Black, Roma, and gay people… including all the former inhabitants of the secret annex with the lone exception of Otto Frank.

The time that Miep spent caring for those in hiding was not pleasant in Amsterdam, there was severe food shortages and more and more control by the Nazi military until, in 1945, the war ended and the rebuilding began. Otto Frank returned to Amsterda and moved in with Miep and Jan for the next seven years. He edited, published, defended, protected, and made sure that his daughter Anne’s legacy, her diary, was read and understood by as many people as possible throughout the world so that atrocities like this may never happen again.

Miep did what she could to support him until he passed away in 1980, then she took up his work until her death at 100 in 2010.

@annefrankhouse

When Otto Frank, Anne Franks father, received the news that Anne and Margot had died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, helper Miep Gies was with him in the office. In this video, she explains how she gave Otto Frank the diaries of Anne Frank. She had saved these papers from the moment the people in hiding were arrested. #annefrank #miepgies #ottofrank #diary #legacy #woii #after

♬ origineel geluid – Anne Frank House – Anne Frank House

Miep said this of her work during the war: “My story is a story of very ordinary people during extraordinary times, times the like of which I hope with all my heart will never come again. It is for all of us ordinary people, all over the world, to see to it that they do not.”

Perhaps more than any other subject, this is not an exhaustive list of materials on Miep, Anne, the Holocaust, WWII…it’s simply the ones that we used and can recommend.

Miep’s memoir
Who betrayed the family? By Rosemary Sullivan (also in audiobook narrated by Julia Whelen)
One of three versions, this is the most recent, the Definitive Version
From Bep’s perspective by her son, Joop Van Wijk-Voskuijl

By Angela Wood
By Carol Ann Lee

By Corrie Ten Boom

By Tim Brady

By Nina Siegal

Kids books:

By Meeg Pincus, Illustrated by Jordi Solano
By Barbara Lowell, illustrated by Valentina Toro

There is a lot of resources on the websites of the Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam, and the Frank Family Center in Frankfurt, Germany.

Who owns Anne Frank’s work?

Final Solution explained from the US Holocaust Museum

Information on the young man who stayed with Miep and Jan, from James Madison University.

Life in Amsterdam during Nazi occupation from Defining Moments Canada (it was the Canadians who liberated Amsterdam.)

Carnation Day protest against the Nazi occupiers from Traces of War.

There were many investigations aimed at revealing the person who betrayed those hiding in the attic, the first one was only a year after the war ended. Here’s an article on one from Anne Frank House website.

1995 documentary based on Miep’s memoir

from 1988 starring Mary Steenburgen

The most recent adaptation of Miep’s memoir, currently on Disney+ (It’s very good)

Episode 264: Miep Gies, Part One

Miep, Identity Card photo circa 1943

Hermine Santrouschitz was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungry on February 15, 1909. Her earliest memories are of the start of what would become World War 1. As the war ravaged her country, it was a tough life in the city as food and work became scarce for her family. That situation became dangerous as malnourishment and tuberculosis hit young Hermine so much, that the only way to save her life was to send her to a foster family outside of Austria.

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Episode 263: A conversation with Anne Sebba: The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz

To leave you with a bit of lagniappe for Women’s History Month, we broke our usual format to sit down for a talk with Anne Sebba, author of the new book, The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival. Anne tells us about some of the women in the orchestra, her process of learning about these women, organizing their stories into this book, and about other biographies she’s written in the past, about the past.

If you live in the UK or Australia, you’re in luck, this book is available now. The rest of us have to either wait or become resourceful to get our hands on a copy. But that doesn’t make the conversation Susan and Anne had about the remarkable survivors of the only all women’s orchestra in any Nazi prison camp any less interesting. Anne tells us the history of the orchestra, introduces us to Alma Rosé, an imprisoned celebrity violinist who became the orchestra’s main conductor, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, then a teenage cellist and, most recently, the last surviving member or the orchestra, and the extraordinary Hilde Grünbaum Zimche who recently passed away in 2024 at 100.

The fabulously named orchestra leader, Alma Rosé

Anne, the author of numerous biographies, also tells us about her process for writing the books that we, non-fiction readers, gobble up (hint: it’s a lot longer than it takes us to read them.) To read more about Anne’s work, visit this, her website.

Other things we discussed:
The Shoah Foundation, formed after Schindeler’s List movie, whose mission is to “collect, preserve, and share survivor testimonies in order to increase knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust and to build a future for all that rejects antisemitism, hatred, dehumanization, and genocide.”

This book and movie it’s based on:

End music: Way, Way Back by Lvly with Megan Gifford, used with permission from Epidemic Sound

Episode 262: Wangari Muta Maathai, Part Two

Wangari Maathai

We wrap up our coverage of this brave, trailblazing woman who defied convention, governmental oppression, violence, and financial hurdles (to name a few) to begin the Greenbelt Movement which not only planted 40 million trees and counting, but helped empower women around the world work for bettering themselves and their own communities from the ground up!

Her funeral with glimpses of her unique coffin, her children, and some archival footage of Wangari herself.

Her memoir
by Wangari Maathai
by Wangari Maathai
By Namulundah Florence

So many kids’ books!!

by Eucabeth Odiambo
Part of the Rebel Girls series

By Gwendolyn Hooks, Margaux Carpentier
by Jeannete Winter

by Maureen McQuerry and Robin Rosenthal

And off-topic but discussed (IYKYN) :

By Libba Bray
By Gwendolyn Hooks and Colin Bootman

The Green Belt Movement is still very active, here is their website with lots of information about their mission. their work, and their history, and the Wangari Maathai Foundation has a lot of information as well.

The Greenbelt Movement is still active around the world, here is a very recent article about how they are still standing up to the government of Kenya: The Nation (e-paper)

There is tree planted in Wangari’s honor in Washington, D.C. it’s a Golden Rain tree, lovely but pretty invasive. Here’s an article about it from the University of Florida.

Here is some information on Sagana State Lodge in Kenya where Princess Elizabeth learned she was Queen Elizabeth while Wangari was in school nearby: Sagana Lodge

The Bowery Boys New York City History podcast has several episodes that discuss parts of Central Park, this is a good one to start with: The early years of Central Park.

***We don’t usually add things to our shownotes that we didn’t talk about on the show, but a lovely friend of the show, ELizabeth, shared the One Tree Planted organization with us which is part of the Trillion Tree program that we did talk about. Check them out and help plant trees all over the world!

Episode 261: Wangari Muta Maathai, Part One

Wangari Maathai, 2008 via Oregon State University

Wangari Maathai understood the vital connections between living things and the Earth; of local communities and the wider world. It is true that many trees make a mighty forest, and Maathai’s Green Belt Movement made it clear to us all that the most important change for the greater good is one that each individual makes in their own backyard… a philosophy which would earn her the Nobel Peace Prize.

The map that Beckett found up high in an antique store.

Episode 260: Georgia Gilmore

Georgia Theresa Gilmore was born on February 5, 1920, in Montgomery, Alabama, where she lived and worked her entire life. And,as we explain in the podcast, that life was far from easy. By the time she was in her 20s she had a long list of jobs including laundress, railroad tie-changer, midwife, and the one that she used to solely support her growing household of six children, her mother, and various extended family: a cook.

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