Behind the Bookcase: Miep Gies, Anne Frank and the Hiding Place by Barbara Lowell illustrated by Valentia Toro

Have you heard of Miep Gies? Of course you have heard of Anne Frank but Miep's story is important too. Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in July 1942 in Amsterdam. They hid in an annex hidden behind a bookcase in a building where Mr Frank worked. Others hid with Anne, Margot and their parents - Herman, Auguste and Peter van Pells knowns as van Daan's in Anne's diary and later a dentist named Fritz Pfeffer. Only five people who worked in the offices below knew about the people in hiding. One of them was Miep Gies. She was their link to the outside world. She bought food and news and some comfort until, very sadly on 4th August, 1944 the group were discovered and arrested. 

Image Source: Tara Lazar blog

Luckily, Miep went back into the annex after the arrests and found the famous diary written by Anne. She did not read it but hid it away until after the war, when she gave it to Mr Frank. He was the only person to survive from the group. Anne and her sister Margot died in Bergen Belsen in 1945. 

Here is an audio sample from Behind the Bookcase. Here is an interview with Barbara Lowell. You can see art from this book here. Here is a review by the Jewish Book Council.

Recently someone asked (on a Facebook group) for some simpler versions of the Anne Frank story for a younger reader not yet ready to read the full diary.  There are lots of these - I have put a few covers below.

In answer to the question posed above I mentioned Miep Gies. I know Anne's diary is a very important book but to me the real hero of the story is Miep. Although Miep herself says:

"I am not a hero. I stand at the end of a long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did or more ... Never a day goes by that I do not think of what happened then."  Miep Gies

I have only found two picture books, this one and another, which explore Miep's role in the life of Anne and the Frank family. The idea that she had to ride her bicycle around Amsterdam with counterfeit food coupons going to different small grocery stores each day has lingered with me. She must have been so afraid. She was trying to obtain food for all of the people hiding in the attic but shopkeepers may have become suspicious if she returned to their store too often so she moved around the city shopping at different stores each day always fearful of discovery. This aspect of the story is not mentioned in Behind the Bookcase. I have this second book on my to read list:

I have often talked with classes about Meip when we read some other Holocaust book such as Let the Celebrations begin by Margaret Wild, The Children we Remember, and Rose Blanche by Roberto Innocenti. I thought I knew quite a bit about Miep but I had no idea she herself had been impacted by War. Suffering from malnutrition after the First world War Miep, along with many other children, was sent away from her parents to live with a family in the Netherlands. Her birth name was Hermoine Santrouschitz but her new family, the Nieuwenhuises, renamed her Miep. 

Read more about Miep:

National Geographic

This Day in History - January 11  Miep Gies, who hid Anne Frank, dies at 100

Scholastic - An interview with Miep from 1997