Special documents

Miep Gies possesses a number of special historical documents. You can view a selection of these below.

A trip organized by the Dutch Workers' Union gave the undernourished Miep Gies (then called Hermine Santruschitz) from Vienna a chance to recuperate in a Dutch working class family. Below you can see the Dutch medical declaration, issued in Vienna, showing how she was medically approved to travel to the Netherlands on December 13, 1920.

 Read more

Miep Gies (then still named Hermine Santruschitz) came to the Netherlands as an eleven-year old to recuperate with a foster family in Leiden, following the food shortage experienced in Vienna during the First World War. At a physician's recommendation, her first stay of three months was prolonged by another three months.

 Read more

Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938 and renamed as Ost-Mark. Below you can see a declaration from Austria, prescribed by the German occupier and drawn up on February 7, 1939, declaring that Miep Gies (born in Vienna as Hermine Santruschitz) is of non-Jewish descent.

 Read more

The so-called Cuba letter that suggested Jewish citizens could obtain visas for Cuba. Otto Frank also applied, but this (German) letter dated November 24, 1941, was returned to him unprocessed.

 Read more

When Otto Frank rang the doorbell of Jan and Miep Gies' home in Hunzestraat in Amsterdam on June 3, 1945, he already knew that his wife Edith had not survived the war. A lady that had been with her in captivity in the Birkenau concentration camp wrote this note to Otto Frank on November 6, 1945, confirming that Edith Frank had died in the camp on January 6, 1945.

 Read more

Official notice from the Red Cross from 1954 that Margot Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, somewhere between 1 and 31 March, 1945. Otto Frank had already heard of both his daughters' deaths in the summer of 1945, from a nurse who was in the same camp as Anne en Margot Frank.

 Read more

Official notice from the Red Cross from 1954 that Anne Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, somewhere between 1 and 31 March, 1945. Otto Frank had already heard of both his daughters' deaths in the summer of 1945, from a nurse who was in the same camp as Anne en Margot Frank.

 Read more

After her book was published in 1987, Miep Gies received invitations from all over the world to recount her memories of Anne Frank and the other people hiding in the Secret Annex. Miep Gies considered it an honor to speak on behalf of Anne at such occasions.

 Read more