Miep Gies: I Was Just an Ordinary Housewife

Miep Gies never wanted to be called a hero, but the woman who helped protect one of the Holocaust's most familiar faces left a legacy of moral leadership and courage recognized the world over.

Gies, who was among the small group that helped the family of Anne Frank hide from the Nazis for two years, passed away this week at the age of 100. After the Franks were discovered and taken to concentration camps in 1944, Gies found Anne's now famous diary and returned it to her father, Otto, the only surviving member of the family, after the war ended.

But Gies dismissed post-war praise of her heroism as undeserved, telling school children in 1997 that she was simply doing her "human duty." But while the history of genocide is indeed full of examples of those who risked death themselves to save the lives of others, it is even more full of those who did not. Gies's comment hits at the heart of what makes genocide so difficult to comprehend -- genocide represents a grand failure of "human duty," and far too often seemingly simple questions of morality and compassion succumb to a susceptibility to fear-mongering and brain-washing and to baser instincts of self-preservation.

To do one's human duty when the world has turned upside down is thus not as straightforward as it should be, and Gies and others like her serve as examples, to the entire world, of moral leadership in times of strife -- in times that what should be ordinary becomes extraordinary.

Photo: Adria Richards