My Writing Process

Okay, I stole this from Rachel Pudelek, young adult fantasy author, and adapted this Q & A for my blog. The rest of you may steal this just as I did. :~)

1. What are you working on?
I am currently laboring on a YA Historical novel called, “Hidden Places,” which is set in Poland during WWII.

2. How does your work differ from others in your genre?
Well, much of the young adult fiction out there on the Holocaust is told from a Jewish perspective. For the longest time I thought it might be interesting to tell a story from the POV of a Catholic Polish girl and how she copes with the Nazi occupation.

3. Why do you write what you write?
I don’t know. Most likely out of compulsion. Ever since I read Anne Frank’s diary, I have been obsessed with the Holocaust. I have been writing since I was a kid so it was only natural that I would eventually write about the Holocaust.

4. How does your writing process work?
Uhh, there is a process? I know there is much hair pulling and chocolate nibbling, but a process? Just kiddng.
Usually I read a book or watch a movie and am drawn to a certain person/character. I create a story for this character, secondary characters, situations and scenes. Then comes the research, which includes reading hundreds of books and articles, watching documentaries and movies. Next, I write a freakishly bad first draft. After that there is a two week rest period and then months and months of revision. Then I get it into my head that my WIP is ready and send off a barrage of queries to literary agents. Following hundreds of rejections and two years of addictive labor, I must come to terms with the fact no one wants it, go into a period of intense mourning, set it up on the proverbial shelf and then start all over again with a new project.

A New Miniseries About Anne Frank

German filmmakers are turning the story Anne Frank's life into a miniseries, due in 2015—the 70th anniversary of her death. The two-part miniseries will have a "more modern approach" to the story. Not sure what that means, but you probably still won't be able to watch without sobbing inconsolably.

The Hollywood Reporter gives a little more background on the project, which'll be a joint effort form German production group Constantin Film and the public broadcaster ZDF:

The series will trace the lives of Frank, her family and friends starting three years before they were forced into hiding by the Nazis. The focus in part will be the transformation of the young Frank from an extroverted young girl before her time in hiding to the increasingly introverted and reflective teenager seen in her diaries.
Nor is it the only project in the works. Deadline says the director of Waltz with Bashir, Ari Folman, is making an animated film. He's been given unprecedented access to the archives of the Anne Frank Fonds Basel, which was founded by Otto Frank.




Blogger's Note: This is possibly the same project that Fred Breinersdorfer is working on. He was the writer for the movie "Sophie Scholl: The Final Days."

Remembering Margot

Jetteke Frijda was Margot's best friend. They were at the same school, first the Girls' High School and later the Jewish High School. In July 1942 Margot suddenly disappeared. Jetteke heard that the family had fled to Switzerland. It wasn't until after the war that Otto was able to tell her what had really happened. Jetteke Frijda also went into hiding in the summer of 1942. She was not betrayed and survived the war.

"I first met Margot Frank at the Girls' High School. That was in 1938 when we were both 12 years old. At first I didn't have much to do with her but later we went a lot together, especially when we went to the Jewish High School. I knew, of course, that Margot had come over from Germany but she never spoke about it. She spoke fluent Dutch. Only if you listened very carefully could you hear a slight accent. Margot was sweet and kind. She was good at everything but also very modest. you could trust her; you could rely on her. Margot never spoke much about herself she was closed. What did we do? together? I can't really remember anymore, it was more than sixty years ago. I do remember that once, when I had 'flu and croaked " I'm dying, I'm dying," Margot said to me "You won't die that quickly.""

"Anne was a frivolous child who always sought attention and always wanted to be the first at everything. She was three years younger than Margot and that was quite an age difference. Margot looked upon Anne as her little sister, someone she had to protect. She must have been irritated by her occasionally but she never let it show."

"I didn't get on very well with Margot's mother, I found her distant. Her father was completely different, he was a very nice man. He showed me the office on the Prinsengracht once. I really found it very interesting, because I was shown around by the boss himself! He showed me the premises and told me everything about Opekta, the product that he sold. We used Opekta at home every day. I can see myself being shown around and I must have been into the secret annex too."

"My father was professor and member of the Academic Support Fund, a committee for academic refugees from Germany. We had a lot of contact with the refugees because my parents met these people, arranged accommodation, food and clothes for them. It's because of this that we had an idea of what could be expected when the German army occupied the Netherlands. In the thirties there was also anti-Semitism in the Netherlands, but it was hidden. I was at school with children whose parents were in the NSB (Dutch wing of the nazi party) but didn't notice anything in particular. These children didn't shout 'You're a Jew so get lost,' but you knew that they were anti-Semitic."

"In May 1940 the Netherlands were occupied by the Germany army. In the Autumn of 1941 all Jewish children had to attend Jewish schools. Margot and I went to the Jewish High School. It was the first time in our secondary education that we had boys in our class. It was a class of six girls and nineteen boys. The attention we received was wonderful! Of course, I had a boyfriend. Whether Margot had one I don't know. She was very reserved. Outside school there wasn't much to do because we always had homework and we had to be indoors by eight o' clock. Jews weren't allowed to ride bicycles anymore so we had to walk everywhere. From one day to the next something new was forbidden. I felt very threatened and had the feeling that I would suffocate from fear even though it wasn't as bad then as it was to become later."

"On a summer's day Margot Frank had suddenly disappeared. I went to their house on the Merwedeplein straightaway because I wanted to know what had happened. I heard from a neighbour that the Franks had fled to Switzerland. The door was slightly open and all there things were still there. I went into Margot's room and looked around. I took a book from the shelf to remember her by. It was a book about Dutch poets. Margot and I were both very interested in literature. Then I left quickly because what I had done was dangerous. I was wearing a Star of David and I was looking around the house of a Jewish family that had fled."

"In August 1942 I went into hiding. I moved hiding places five times. I was in an orphanage in the Veluwe region, in Zeist, in Amsterdam, sometimes for a few days, sometimes for months on end. My hiding situation was completely different from that of Margot. I could still walk the streets because I didn't look particularly Jewish. Once I took a short walk with a women where I was hiding and she introduced me to someone as her niece. 'Yes,' said the person, 'you can see that you look alike.' Thank goodness I was never arrested then I would really have been in trouble. Although I had forged papers I didn't know much more than my false surname. It would really have been better if I had learnt my new identity off by heart, but I could never bring myself to do it. My hiding places were all different. In some places I didn't have to do anything at all but in others I had to perform household tasks, such as in the orphanage. There I wasn't allowed to talk to anyone. Later I heard it was because they were afraid that someone who worked there would betray me. For the last year I was in hiding with a very religious family. There, I had to help a lot in the house and they tried to convert me."

After the war Otto Frank was so busy with Anne Frank's diary. I told him then: 'I think it's a pity that nothing is mentioned anymore about Margot. She is also worthy of being mentioned.'

"After the liberation I contacted my family straight away. They were very good to me. I hoped that Margot had survived the war. I started work in the Public Reading Room in The Hague. One day I heard that there was someone looking for me. It was Otto Frank. He told me that his wife and daughters had perished in concentration camps. He had met my father in Auschwitz. He cried. I don't remember how I reacted anymore, so much happened in those days; people who came back, those who didn't... Then I heard that my father had been murdered. I just had to accept it. I had always known that it was a possibility. You just accepted what happened and it didn't seem to surprise you. During the war I was very afraid and humiliated. After the war I had no security anymore. I had no friends, no furniture, no house, nothing. I had to start all over again. Only when you have experienced that can you imagine what it's like. We didn't talk about emotions then as we do now. Emotions were pushed away much more."

"After the war Otto Frank was so busy with Anne Frank's diary. He was very impressed with what readers of the diary had written to him. I told him then. 'I think it's wonderful what you are doing for Anne, but I think it's a pity that nothing is mentioned anymore about Margot. She is also worthy of being mentioned.'"

I Saw Anne Frank Die

Original Article

I TURNED 100 YEARS OLD IN APRIL AND HAD A BEAUTIFUL birthday party surrounded by my grandchildren, great-grandchildren and other family members. I even danced a little. Willard Scott mentioned my name on television. But such a time is also for reflection. I decided to overcome my long reluctance to revisit terrible times. Older people must tell their stories. With the help of Jonathan Alter of NEWSWEEK, here's a bit of mine:

I was born in Germany in 1897, got married and had two children in the 1920s. Then Hitler came to power, and like many other Jews, we fled to Holland. As the Nazis closed in, we sent one daughter abroad with relatives and the other into hiding with my sister and her children in The Hague. My husband and I could not hide so easily, and in 1941 we were sent first to Westerbork, a transit camp where we stayed about a year, and later to Bergen-Belsen, a work and transit camp, from where thousands of innocent people were sent to extermination camps. There were no ovens at Bergen-Belsen; instead the Nazis killed us with starvation and disease. My husband and brother both died there. I stayed for about three years before it was liberated in the spring of 1945. When I went in, I weighed more than 125 pounds. When I left, I weighed 78.

After I arrived at the Bergen-Belsen barracks, I was told I was to be the barracks leader. I said, ""I'm not strong enough to be barracks leader.'' They said that would be disobeying a command. I was terrified of this order, but had no choice. It turned out that the Nazi commandant of the camp was from my home town in Germany and had studied with my uncle in Strasbourg. This coincidence probably helped save my life. He asked to talk to me privately and wanted to know what I had heard of my uncle. I said I wanted to leave Bergen-Belsen, maybe go to Palestine. The commandant said, ""If I could help you, I would, but I would lose my head.'' About once every three weeks, he would ask to see me. I was always afraid. It was very dangerous. Jews were often shot over nothing. After the war, I heard he had committed suicide.

There were about 500 women and girls in my barracks. Conditions were extremely crowded and unsanitary. No heat at all. Every morning, I had to get up at 5 and wake the rest. At 6 a.m., we went to roll call. Often we had to wait there for hours, no matter the weather. Most of the day, we worked as slave labor in the factory, making bullets for German soldiers. When we left Holland, I had taken only two changes of clothes, one toothbrush, no books or other possessions. Later I had a few more clothes, including a warm jacket, which came from someone who died. Men and women lined up for hours to wash their clothes in the few sinks. There were no showers in our barracks. And no bedding. The day was spent working and waiting. At 10 p.m., lights out. At midnight, the inspection came - three or four soldiers. I had to say everything was in good condition when, in fact, the conditions were beyond miserable. Then up again at 5 a.m.

One of the children in my barracks toward the end of the war was Anne Frank, whose diary became famous after her death. I didn't know her family beforehand, and I don't recall much about her, but I do remember her as a quiet child. When I heard later that she was 15 when she was in the camps, I was surprised. She seemed younger to me. Pen and paper were hard to find, but I have a memory of her writing a bit. Typhus was a terrible problem, especially for the children. Of 500 in my barracks, maybe 100 got it, and most of them died. Many others starved to death. When Anne Frank got sick with typhus, I remember telling her she could stay in the barracks - she didn't have to go to roll call.

There was so little to eat. In my early days there, we were each given one roll of bread for eight days, and we tore it up, piece by piece. One cup of black coffee a day and one cup of soup. And water. That was all. Later there was even less. When I asked the commandant for a little bit of gruel for the children's diet, he would sometimes give me some extra cereal. Anne Frank was among those who asked for cereal, but how could I find cereal for her? It was only for the little children, and only a little bit. The children died anyway. A couple of trained nurses were among the inmates, and they reported to me. In the evening, we tried to help the sickest. In the morning, it was part of my job to tell the soldiers how many had died the night before. Then they would throw the bodies on the fire.

I have a dim memory of Anne Frank speaking of her father. She was a nice, fine person. She would say to me, ""Irma, I am very sick.'' I said, ""No, you are not so sick.'' She wanted to be reassured that she wasn't. When she slipped into a coma, I took her in my arms. She didn't know that she was dying. She didn't know that she was so sick. You never know. At Bergen-Belsen, you did not have feelings anymore. You became paralyzed. In all the years since, I almost never talked about Bergen-Belsen. I couldn't. It was too much.

When the war was over, we went in a cattle truck to a place where we stole everything out of a house. I stole a pig, and we had a butcher who slaughtered it. Eating this - when we had eaten so little before - was bad for us. It made many even sicker. But you can't imagine how hungry we were. At the end, we had absolutely nothing to eat. I asked an American soldier holding a piece of bread if I could have a bite. He gave me the whole bread. That was really something for me.

When I got back to Holland, no one knew anything. I finally found a priest who had the address where my sister and daughter were. I didn't know if they were living or not. They were. They had been hidden by a man who worked for my brother. That was luck. I found them and began crying. I was so thin that at first they didn't recognize me.

There are many stories like mine, locked inside people for decades. Even my family heard only a little of this one until recently. Whatever stories you have in your family, tell them. It helps.

Wax Figure of Anne Frank

Full Article Here

Recently a wax figure of Anne Frank was created. The link above leads to the full article and shows all the photos of it. Here are a few of the photos here. The resemblance between the figure and the real Anne Frank is astounding. It makes me want to cry.


-- A photograph of the real Anne Frank

Confessions of a Holocaust Addict

Have you ever had a fascination with a subject or a person that wholly consumes you until you don’t know where you begin and it ends? Mine is the Holocaust. It is perhaps one of the darkest periods in the history of mankind and I am obsessed with it. I can’t explain why. Its not like I have a personal connection to it. No one in my family suffered through it nor do I have any friends who were survivors of it. But every since I read Anne Frank’s diary, I can’t stop myself from studying it. Oh, I have gone months and years without reading about it, but then I encounter a story or learn about a person who lived in during that hell, and I’m diving back in.

Moderation is the key with any interest or hobby. Unfortunately that isn’t the case with my fascination. I can read on average five books on the Holocaust every week, and watch two movies or documentaries as well. That doesn’t count the Internet research that I do. By three months end, I am mentally and emotionally exhausted. For three months I recuperate and then when I’m feeling good and refreshed again, I fall into the same cycle.

Last week some time I realized that I couldn’t do it anymore. I’m tired of the vicious cycle that I fall into. I need a break and I mean a real break. I may read a book here and there and if a new movie comes out, I’ll have to watch it. But I don’t intend to do any serious studying on the Holocaust for a few years- like at least five. Maybe by then I will remember why I started studying it in the first place. Sometimes I forget that the Holocaust just isn’t a subject to read about- it is about individuals like Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler, Sophie Scholl, Irena Sendler, Eva Mozes-Kor, Eli Weisel, Simon Wiesenthal, etc.

I had planned on dedicating this month's blog posts to lesser-known stories about the Holocaust, but I just can’t do it now. Maybe later on this year or next year sometime.

Thank you for reading my thoughts.

Anne Frank Was Storyteller at Nazi Camp

http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/anne-frank-told-stories-to-district-children-at-concentration-camp-survivor-says/19404021?icid=main|main|dl1|link2|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolnews.com%2Fworld%2Farticle%2Fanne-frank-told-stories-to-district-children-at-concentration-camp-survivor-says%2F19404021








AMSTERDAM (March 17) - Frail, bone-cold and surrounded by death, Jewish teenager Anne Frank did her best to distract younger children from the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp by telling them fairy tales, a Holocaust survivor says.

The account by Berthe Meijer, now 71, of being a 6-year-old inmate of Bergen Belsen offers a rare glimpse of Anne in the final weeks of her life in the German camp, struggling to keep up her own spirits even as she tried to lift the morale of the smaller children.

That Anne had a gift for storytelling was evident from the diary she kept during two years in hiding with her family in Amsterdam. The scattered pages were collected and published after the war in what became the most widely read book to emerge from the Holocaust.

But Meijer's memoir, being published in Dutch later this month, is the first to mention Anne's talent for spinning tales even in the despair of the camp.

The memoir deals with Meijer's acquaintance with Anne Frank in only a few pages, but she said she titled it "Life After Anne Frank" because it continues the tale of Holocaust victims where the famous diary leaves off.

"The dividing line is where the diary of Anne Frank ends. Because then you fall into a big black hole," Meijer told The Associated Press at her Amsterdam home.

Anne's final diary entry was on Aug. 1, 1944, three days before she and her family were arrested. She and her older sister Margot died in March 1945 in a typhus epidemic that swept through Bergen Belsen, just two weeks before the camp was liberated. Anne was 15.

The stories Anne told were "fairy tales in which nasty things happened, and that was of course very much related to the war," Meijer said.

"But as a kid you get lifted out of the everyday nastiness. That's something I remember. You're listening to someone telling something that has nothing to do with what's happening around you - so it's a bit of escape."

In addition to her diary, Frank wrote several essays and fragments of fiction while in hiding, including stories about a fairy and a gnome, though they are usually considered only of historical interest. They have been published as "Tales From the Secret Annex."

The stories she told in the camp were "about princes and elves and those kind of figures," Meijer said. Despite having unhappy twists, the tales were "quite a bit less terrible than what we saw around us. So you thought: they didn't have it so bad. As a child, you think very primitively about that kind of thing."

Around 140,000 Jews lived in the Netherlands before the 1940-45 Nazi occupation. Of those, 107,000 were deported to Germany and only 5,200 survived.

The Meijers and the Franks were acquaintances before the war: members of both families had fled Germany during the rise of Hitler's regime and found a place in the tightly-knit Jewish community in Amsterdam. The Meijers lived on the same street where Anne attended a Montessori elementary school.

The Franks went into hiding in a secret apartment above a canal-side warehouse where Otto Frank, Anne's father, had his business.

The Meijers hid in their own home, boarding up the windows and hanging a sign on the door that read "contagious disease" to discourage visitors. They were caught in early 1944 and deported from the Netherlands that March. Both of Berthe's parents died at Bergen Belsen in January 1945.

Dr. Alan Hilfer, director of psychology at Maimonides Medical Center in New York, said it's plausible that Meijer would have recognized Frank and stored the memory all these years if she knew her before the war and if she met her again at the camp.

A child of six or seven can "form memories reasonably well and hold on to them, though not in the same way as an adult," he said.

Records obtained by The Associated Press from Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial authority, show that Berthe was an inmate of Bergen Belsen for 13 months until it was liberated in April 1945.

Annemarie Bekker, a spokeswoman for the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam said Berthe Meijer has previously been interviewed by museum historians and she had no reason to doubt Meijer's testimony.

"It could very well be true," Bekker said. "We can't confirm it or deny it."

Hannah Pick-Goslar, a childhood friend of Anne Frank who also met her in Bergen Belsen, said she doubted Meijer's recollection was accurate.

"In that condition, you almost died," she said in a telephone call from her home in Jerusalem. "You had no strength to tell stories."

Meijer acknowledged that her recollections of the Frank sisters were fleeting.

She said there were many reasons she had waited until now to tell her story - not least that she was busy growing up, having a career and raising a family. She said a dedication ceremony at Bergen Belsen in 2006 made her realize how few Dutch survivors are still alive, and that there is little record of the impact the camp had on their later lives.

In addition, she suppressed her memories for years, and the horror of the camps have always been a difficult or taboo subject: at the orphanage where Meijer grew up, in polite company afterward, and even among her fellow survivors.

Still, "you remember a lot at age 7," she said. Meijer turned 7 in April 1945.

"You had to take off your clothes because there were lice in them that spread typhus. And you were wrapped in those blankets. And you sat somewhere in a corner half-frozen."

She said Margot had asked Anne to tell stories to cheer up the children, and that it was difficult for Anne to summon the enthusiasm.

The last time she saw Anne was in the camp infirmary, but they were both sick and "too weak and sad to even be pleasant to each other," she wrote.

In some ways, Meijer grew up to be the person Anne had hoped to be, a journalist, a columnist and an author, albeit of a popular Dutch cookbook.

In her diary Anne wrote in April 1944: "I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn. But, and that is the great question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?"

Although Meijer associated with leading Dutch writers and artists, she said she suffered lifelong symptoms of post-traumatic stress, with overwhelming memories and emotions surfacing unexpectedly.

To this day she has a paralyzing fear of crowds and public transportation.

In her book, she wonders about her choices in marrying first a gifted, but alcoholic architect and later one of the Netherlands' most famed journalists - not coincidentally, another Bergen Belsen survivor.

She says she can laugh "through the tears" about having become a culinary expert years after fantasizing endlessly about food while starving at the camp.

She describes how the simple act of cleaning sauce from a pan with her finger can trigger the ambiguously pleasant memory of being allowed to lick one of the camp's enormous cooking vats.

And she proudly shows off a concealed crawl space behind an opening in her cellar where she could hide if need be.

In history books, "the war ends when we were liberated. No. Not for a lot of people," she says.

"Not for the lives of the people who survived those camps or went into hiding or had traumatic experiences because of that war. Those things, they don't go away."

I’m Taking a Break

No, not from the blog world, but from the subject I have been writing about and researching for the last seven years straight: the Holocaust. Actually, I have been reading about the holocaust longer than that. When I was twelve and received “The Diary of a Young Girl” for my birthday, I had to do some background research to completely understand what was going on in the Netherlands when Anne Frank wrote in her diary. And then in 2003 I decided to write about the Holocaust in Poland and have surrounded myself with that dark period in history every since. Not only that, for the last two years I have dug deeper into the subject of Nazi Germany for a future fictional series that I would like to tackle.

In the last six months or so, I have become overwhelmed and a little depressed at times and I think its due to consistently reading about the Holocaust. So, I need a break from writing and reading about it. It won’t be forever, but it needs to be for awhile so I can regroup emotionally.

In the mean time, I plan to write about more lighthearted subjects. In fact, two other authors and I intend to write a series together which should be awesome. Right now I’m beginning a story that is based in the Edwardian era in my own beloved state.

Perhaps six months to a year from now I can pick up where I left off. Until then, its going to be refreshing to write about something that isn’t connected to genocide, hatred, evil, etc…

Miep Gies, who helped hide Anne Frank, dies at 100

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100112/ap_on_re_eu/eu_netherlands_obit_miep_gies



AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – Miep Gies, the office secretary who defied the Nazi occupiers to hide Anne Frank and her family for two years and saved the teenager's diary, has died, the Anne Frank House museum said Tuesday. She was 100.

Gies died from a neck injury sustained in a fall at her home shortly before Christmas, museum spokeswoman Annemarie Bekker said.

Gies was the last of the few non-Jews who supplied food, books and good cheer to the secret annex behind the canal warehouse where Anne, her parents, sister and four other Jews hid for 25 months during World War II.

After the apartment was raided by the German police, Gies gathered up Anne's scattered notebooks and papers and locked them in a drawer for her return after the war. The diary, which Frank had been given on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life in hiding from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944.

Gies refused to read the papers, saying even a teenager's privacy was sacred. Later, she said if she had read them she would have had to burn them because they incriminated the "helpers."

Frank died of typhus at age 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, just two weeks before the camp was liberated. Gies gave the diary to Frank's father Otto, the only survivor, who published it in 1947.

"Every day for over two years she put herself in danger by hiding Jews from the Nazis," said Anne Frank's cousin, Bernd "Buddy" Elias, who last saw Gies on her 100th birthday. "If they had caught her, she would have been put in a concentration camp herself."

Her death removed one of the last living direct links to Anne Frank, with only Elias and a few of her childhood friends still alive.

An online registry quickly recorded hundreds of condolences from around the world.

After the diary was published, Gies tirelessly promoted causes of tolerance. She brushed aside the accolades for helping hide the Frank family as more than she deserved — as if, she said, she had tried to save all the Jews of occupied Holland.

"This is very unfair. So many others have done the same or even far more dangerous work," she wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press days before her 100th birthday in February.

"The Diary of Anne Frank" was the first popular book about the Holocaust, and has been read by millions of children and adults around the world in 70 languages.

For her courage, Gies was bestowed with the "Righteous Gentile" title by the Israeli Holocaust museum Yad Vashem. She has also been honored by the German Government, Dutch monarchy and educational institutions.

Nevertheless, Gies resisted being made a character study of heroism for the young.

"I don't want to be considered a hero," she said in a 1997 online chat with schoolchildren.

"Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary."

Born Hermine Santrouschitz on Feb. 15, 1909 in Vienna, Gies moved to Amsterdam when she was 11 to escape food shortages in Austria. She lived with a host family who gave her the nickname Miep.

In 1933, Gies took a job as an office assistant in the spice business of Otto Frank. After refusing to join a Nazi organization in 1941, she avoided deportation to Austria by marrying her Dutch boyfriend, Jan Gies.

As the Nazis ramped up their arrests and deportations of Dutch Jews, Otto Frank asked Gies in July 1942 to help hide his family in the annex above the company's canal-side warehouse on Prinsengracht 263 and to bring them food and supplies.

"I answered, 'Yes, of course.' It seemed perfectly natural to me. I could help these people. They were powerless, they didn't know where to turn," she said years later.

Jan and Miep Gies worked with four other employees in the firm to sustain the Franks and four other Jews sharing the annex. Jan secured extra food ration cards from the underground resistance. Miep cycled around the city, alternating grocers to ward off suspicions from this highly dangerous activity.

In her e-mail to the AP in February, Gies remembered her husband, who died in 1993, as one of Holland's unsung war heroes. "He was a resistance man who said nothing but did a lot. During the war he refused to say anything about his work, only that he might not come back one night. People like him existed in thousands but were never heard," she wrote.

Touched by Anne Frank's precocious intelligence and loneliness, Miep also brought her books and newspapers while remembering everybody's birthdays and special days with gifts.

"It seems as if we are never far from Miep's thoughts," Frank wrote.

In her own book, "Anne Frank Remembered," Gies recalled being in the office when the German police, acting on a tip that historians have failed to trace, raided the hide-out in August 1944.

A policeman opened the door to the main office and pointed a revolver at the three employees, telling them to sit quietly. "Bep, we've had it," Gies whispered to Bep Voskuijl.

After the arrests, she went to the police station to offer a bribe for the Franks' release, but it was too late. On Aug. 8, they were sent to Westerbork, a concentration camp in eastern Holland from where they were later packed into cattle cars and deported to Auschwitz. A few months later, Anne and her sister Margot were transported to Bergen-Belsen.

Two of the helpers, Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman, were sent to labor camps, but survived the war.

Around 140,000 Jews lived in the Netherlands before the 1940-45 Nazi occupation. Of those, 107,000 were deported to Germany and only 5,200 survived. Some 24,000 Jews went into hiding, of which 8,000 were hunted down or turned in.

After the war, Otto Frank returned to Amsterdam and lived with the Gies family until he remarried in 1952. Miep worked for him as he compiled the diary, then devoted herself to talking about the diary and answering piles of letters with questions from around the world.

After Otto Frank's death in 1980, Gies continued to campaign against Holocaust-deniers and to refute allegations that the diary was a forgery.

She suffered a stroke in 1997 which slightly affected her speech, but she remained generally in good health and mentally alert.

Her son Paul Gies said last year she was still receiving "a sizable amount of mail" which she handled with the help of a family friend. She spent her days at the apartment where she lived since 2000 in the northern town of Hoorn reading two daily newspapers and following television news and talk shows. She recently moved to a nursing facility, before the fall at her home.

She is survived by her son and three grandchildren.

Happy Birthday, Anne Frank!

Okay, actually Anne Frank's birthday was two days ago on Friday, June 12. This year she would have been eighty years old. May her story live on forever.

A Lil’ Bit of Everything

Recently I finished a series that I have been working on for the past six years. Well, I’ll have to go back and do dozens of drafts, but my heroine’s tale has finally come to an end. It’s an odd feeling. Usually when I finish a book I’m in tears, but this wasn’t the case. I was relieved, as if a heavy burden was lifted from my shoulders. Like I said, there will be many drafts to come, changes, omissions, additions, etc. But someday (God willing) I’ll be published and then I’ll say good-bye to this heroine (for a little while anyway ;~)). I already have another series in mind and am in the midst of preparing for it. It’ll be refreshing to write from a new perspective, a different setting and a unique personality. Not only that, the thought of working on something new is exciting to me.

Yesterday we had our picture taken for the church directory. The photographer was asking what my sister and I did for a living and we replied that we were unpublished authors. Sis said that she wrote about the 101st Airborne and that I wrote about the holocaust. He was impressed and we had a passionate discussion on how important history is to our future. He commented on how young we were to be interested in that sort of thing and was also curious as to how we ended up writing about these topics. My sister and I explained how our grandparents were part of the Great Generation, that they were born at the end of WWI, and lived through the Roaring 20’s, the Great Depression and into WW2. That we grew up hearing about the past and enjoyed listening to their stories. My interest in the holocaust stems back to Anne Frank. I received her diary for my 12th birthday and had absolutely no idea why she was in hiding. I don’t recall the schoolbooks mentioning the holocaust and the concentration camps until high school. So I did research on the Frank family and the whole situation in Europe during the 30’s and 40’s. Later on in middle school I was required to read “The Hiding Place,” which is about Corrie ten Boom and her family hiding Jews, but the curriculum itself never went very in-depth. For awhile there reading about Anne Frank and the holocaust was just an interest… until 2003.

That’s when I began to write about a teenage rescuer in Poland. From then on I read everything about the holocaust that I could get my hands on. My story has went through like hundreds, maybe even thousands of revisions and I pray to God that it gets published. But I’m living on His timing. In the past when I’ve tried to submit it to agents I took God off of His throne and made an idol out of my work. My story is important to me, but God forbid it ever becomes more important than Jesus, my family or my friends.

Pics from the New Anne Frank miniseries

Even though I have my doubts that the new version of "The Diary of Anne Frank" will beat out "Anne Frank: The Whole Story," I still want to see it. Unfortunately, I don't think it's been shown in America yet. At least it will be better than the 1959 version.










The actress who portays Anne (Ellie Kendrick) is actually eighteen years old. She looks so young, doesn't she?









More pics coming soon.

"The Diary of Anne Frank"

According to Wikipedia and imdb.com, "The Diary of Anne Frank" (2009) will be premiering on the BBC on January 6, 2009. I don't know what that means for us Yanks, whether it'll be on PBS the same evening or not. But I'll continue looking around.

Director: Jon Jones

Produced: Elinor Day

Writer: Deborah Moggach

Music: Charlie Mole

BBC
150 min.

No. of episodes 5

Ellie Kendrick ... Anne Frank (5 episodes, 2008-2009)

Kate Ashfield ... Miep Gies (4 episodes, 2009)

Geoff Breton ... Peter Van Daan (4 episodes, 2009)

Roger Frost ... Mr Kleiman (4 episodes, 2009)

Iain Glen ... Otto Frank (4 episodes, 2009)

Tamsin Greig ... Edith Frank (4 episodes, 2009)

Lesley Sharp ... Petronella Van Daan (4 episodes, 2009)

Ron Cook ... Hermann Van Daan (3 episodes, 2009)

Tim Dantay ... Mr Kugler (3 episodes, 2009)

Felicity Jones ... Margot Frank (3 episodes, 2009)

Nicholas Farrell ... Albert Dussel (2 episodes, 2009)


For more info, check out wikipedia.com, imdb.com and elliekendrick.com.