Miep Gies, then office secretary who risked her life by hiding Anne Frank and her family for two years, died yesterday at the age of 100. This heroic woman saved Anne and her family not once, but twice. First she gave them two additional years of life by keeping them alive in a secret annex behind an Amsterdam warehouse. Then she gave them an eternal place in our memories by preserving Anne’s now famous diary.
Despite her claims to the contrary, Miep was hero. And while that might seem obvious to the rest of us, she insisted that she was not really a hero because “so many others have done the same or even far more dangerous work”. Not only is it not true, the definition of heroism should not be how common it is.
Things are not less heroic because others did, or would do, them also. That measure confuses heroism with uniqueness, imagining that heroism, like oranges or pork bellies, is a commodity whose value rises when there is less of it. But given that every human life is infinitely valuable, hence the Mishna’s teaching that to save a life is to save the entire world, that is not the case for heroes like Miep Gies.
Heroism is measured in the risks we take to go beyond ourselves to care for and protect others. Its preciousness is measured in the risk we take and the lives we touch. That is why each of us can always be a hero to somebody. Through acts large and small (hiding the family and saving the diary – which was which?), and no matter who else is doing them, we can all be heroes. Today is a good day to remember that we can all be Miep Gies in our own way.
Author, radio and TV talk show host, and President of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Brad Hirschfield is the author of 
posted January 12, 2010 at 9:29 pm
“We all have a hero in our heart.”
– Dwight K. Schrute, Dunder Mifflin, Scranton Branch
posted January 13, 2010 at 10:28 am
God bless her soul and the souls of all those who helped the Jewish people during the Holocaust.
posted January 13, 2010 at 11:11 am
Isn’t it strange… last night at about 11:30 I put the dvd ‘Freedom Writer’ and couldn’t turn it off, even though it was well past when I should have been to bed… it is a story in which Miep Gies is featured as the hero to a high school class of troubled teens… my heart is heavy… God bless her.
posted January 13, 2010 at 11:47 am
When I was a teenager, I read the Anne Frank Diary. Miep was not only a hero to Anne Frank and her family and associates, but to so many others who learned more about the horrors of the holocaust by reading Anne’s Diary. When you are a teenager, I do believe this Diary that Anne wrote, Miep being mostly responsible for its publishing, the history of the Holocaust and the traditions of the Jewish People does leave more of a stigma within one’s life and more of an empathy for their sufferings. Yes, Miep was definitely a hero to be admired. God blessed her in so many ways.
posted January 13, 2010 at 3:51 pm
I hope rabbis across the world take note of Miep’s passing and commemorate her this Shabbat. The world has always needed more humanitarian heroes like her.
posted January 14, 2010 at 12:20 am
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posted January 20, 2010 at 12:49 am
When she belittled her heroism by saying others did it also, doesn’tessen the importance of what she did. In every major war there are exploits that aren’t heralded in the history books. That doesn’t mean they were any less important or effective in the outcome of the
war than those that were.
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