‘Act if Injustice Happens,’ Says Defender of Anne Frank

Nearly 1,400 people, many survivors of the Holocaust or their descendants, packed the Freedom Forum Theater on Wednesday night to hear the woman who hid Anne Frank and her family during the Nazi occupation of Holland.

“People often ask why I found the courage to help the Franks,” said Miep Gies, 87, of Amsterdam. “This question always surprises me, because I could not have done anything else.”

The visiting Gies, who two weeks ago was knighted by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, is the author of “Anne Frank Remembered,” now a documentary that has been nominated for an Academy Award, to which she has been invited. Her talk Wednesday night was a prologue to the April opening of “Anne Frank in the World” exhibition at the Freedom Forum, for which it raised about $14,000, spokeswoman Dede Ginter said.

For more than two years, Gies hid the Frank family and others in the attic of the pectin business the Franks owned and where she worked.

“Many people looked the other way when the lives of innocent Jews were being destroyed,” Gies said. “You must act if injustice happens. We should not wait for leaders to make the world a better place. We should make this change now in our homes and our schools.”

Otto Frank survived the war and lived with Gies and her husband for a while afterward, but Anne Frank and her mother and sister died in concentration camps.

“Every year on the 4th of August, I close the curtains and do not answer the phone,” Gies said. “That was the day my Jewish friends were taken away. I love and admire them so much. Heroes, true heroes they were.”

Among those in the audience was Leon Leyson, 65, of Fullerton, who said he survived the Holocaust because he was the youngest person placed on Schindler’s list.

Leyson, a high school teacher, said he did not talk about his past until the movie “Schindler’s List” was released.

“It is important [to talk about it], but I do it reluctantly,” he said. “I don’t find it easy or easier to talk about it as time goes on.”

Before her speech, Gies was introduced by four students from local elementary and high schools, one of whom has a special connection to the Frank family. Her grandparents, Sal and Rose DeLima, spent a year in a concentration camp with the Franks.

“Parents should teach their children about the Holocaust,” said Julie DeLima, a Capistrano Valley High School sophomore. “This is something I have never been taught in school. It is nowhere in the curriculum.” Gies’ lecture “is a really good opportunity to educate people more about what happened.”

Another who came to hear Gies Wednesday was Barbara McNamara, 38, of Santa Ana, who said she is “from German background. My mother hated that part of her history, and ingrained it in her children to never let it happen again.”

Marianne Dazzo, 61, of Fullerton said she survived 2 1/2 years in hiding in Holland, separated from her mother.

“Part of me knew that the Germans wanted to kill me, but the other part of me thought my mother didn’t love me anymore,” Dazzo said.

The exhibit at the Fullerton Museum Center, “Anne Frank in the World,” will be on display from April 13 to June 2. Chronicling life in occupied Holland, the exhibit includes 500 photographs depicting Dutch residents in their struggle to survive.

Earlier Wednesday, Gies spoke to about 150 students at Wilson High School in Long Beach.

“Never base your opinion of another person on the skin of that person,” she told them. “All of those who are victims of prejudice are basically innocent.”

Gies underscored those remarks when she revealed that once she harbored a blind hatred of all Germans for what the Nazis had done to Frank’s family. Her mind was unchanged until she mistakenly wandered into a crowd of German tourists after the war and cursed at them, she said. She learned afterward that the group had resisted Hitler and spent time in concentration camps because of it.

“At that moment I started to understand the wisdom of [Anne’s father] Otto Frank, who said we should not lump people together,” she said.