Miep Gies died on Monday at the age of 100. She not only helped hide Anne Frank and seven other Jews during World War II, but she also returned Anne’s diary to her father after the war. The diary ended up being one of the most significant pieces of literature about the Holocaust, and such a staple of middle school English classes that reading it is almost a rite of passage.
Photo: www.annefrank.org
Monica Hesse has a great article in The Washington Post about how Anne Frank was a major influence on a lot of young girls. I was one of them, and Hesse’s article captured the way I felt the first time I read Anne’s diary.
I was eight years old, and Anne was a girl that I could relate to, a girl who was a bit older than me when she was writing (and who would have and should have grown up to be my grandmother’s age.) Anne was funny. She liked reading and wanted to be a writer when she grew up. She was, in some ways, a spoiled brat. She was the first writer that I really empathized with, and that’s what made the knowledge of what happened to her all the more horrific.
I reread the book again and again when I was eight and nine, hiding it from my parents so they wouldn’t think I was too morbid. I bought a book of short stories and essays Anne had written when she was in hiding, and I envied her writing skills, which were considerable for someone so young.
I’m convinced that the popularity of diaries among young girls owes a lot to Anne Frank’s influence. I started my own diary several times (I could never keep it going for more than a few weeks), and almost found myself wishing that some horrible event befall me so that my diary could live on as a historical document the way that Anne’s did. It was the twisted but childish thought of a comfortably bored fourth-grader who wanted more drama in her life. Of course I was relieved when nothing did happen, and my diaries remained in the safety of a box under my bed.
Miep Gies’ death got me thinking first about her incredible bravery and selflessness, and then about the influence she had on future generations by saving the diary. I’ve been meaning to read the book again for the first time since middle school, but I almost don’t want to because I’m afraid it won’t have the same effect that it had on me as a child. But I do know that it was one of the first “grownup” books that I really loved, and one of the ones that made me want to be a writer.
