Miep Gies died yesterday. She was 100 years old. Miep and her husband, Jan, are the Dutch couple who hid Anne Frank and her family for more than two years in an Amsterdam attic. When the Franks were discovered and sent to concentration camps, Miep found Anne’s diary. She kept it until the war ended when she presented it to Otto Frank, Anne’s father and the only surviving member of the Frank family.

I remember reading Anne Frank’s ‘Diary of a Young Girl’ when I was a young girl. Aside from my own family’s connection to the Holocaust, I held a deep fascination with the Netherlands, its windmills, wooden shoes and plucky populace. One night, my father snuck into my room one night and measured my feet while I was sleeping. He made a pair of wooden shoes for me, just like the Dutch children had, with red stripes running up the sides.

Years later, I chose Amsterdam when I decided to spend a semester studying abroad during my junior year in college. The experience of living overseas and seeing the world from a different perspective was life-changing for me. On a recent trip back to my childhood home, I found a stack of photos and letters from years ago, including one I wrote to my parents when I lived in Amsterdam. I mentioned going by myself to visit the Anne Frank Museum. “It was really very interesting and made me do a lot of thinking,” were the words I wrote to my parents some thirty years ago.

Hearing of Miep’s passing today inspired more thinking. Throughout her life, Miep repeatedly said she wasn’t a hero, but simply a common citizen doing what seemed necessary at the time. ”My decision to help Otto was because I saw no alternative. I could foresee many sleepless nights and an unhappy life if I would refuse. And that was not the kind of future I wanted to for myself.”

In my opinion, this is Miep’s legacy. One individual making the choice to stand up for what she believed was right by helping those in need, even if it meant risking her own life. While she couldn’t change hearts of stone or the chaos that surrounded her, she could make a difference in the hearts of those she cared for, even if only for a short while.

There is so much that happens in life which we can’t change and can’t control. In the face of adversity, sometimes all we have is our ability to hold tight to what we believe and do right by ourselves by doing right by others.

“I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.”
– Anne Frank