The reluctant hero, who ensured that the diary of Anne Frank did not fall into the hands of Nazis after the 14-year-old's arrest, has is died. She was 100.
Gies was among a group of Dutch citizens who hid the Frank family of four and four other people in a secret annex in Amsterdam, Netherlands, during World War II, according to her official Web site, which announced her death Monday. The family stayed in the secret room from July 1942 until August 4, 1944, when they were arrested by Gestapo and Dutch police after being betrayed by an informant.
When Gies and a friend were left behind, she picked up Anne's papers from the floor, kept them in a desk drawer and gave them to Anne's father, Otto, after the war. Anne died in a concentration camp in 1945. Her father published her diary, titled "The Secret Annex," in 1947. It was released in America in 1952.
