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Young Miep Gies

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"Although I was eleven, I looked much younger. My long, fine dark blond hair was held back with a large piece of cotton cloth tied into a big puffed bow. A card was hung around my neck. On it was printed a strange name, the name of people I had never met. The train was filled with many children like me, all with cards around their necks."

'It was a good visit, but this time no mention was made of the possibility of my returning to Austria. I was now Dutch through and through. The hungry little eleven-year-old Viennese girl with tag tied around her neck and a bow in her hair had faded away entirely. I was now a robust young Dutch woman."
-Miep Gies in 'Anne Frank Remembered'

Miep Gies (on the right) around 12 years old, with foster mother in Leiden, around 1921.

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On 15 February 1909, Miep Gies was born into a working class family in Vienna, as Hermine Santruschitz (later spelt in the Netherlands as Santrouschitz). She was five years old when the First World War broke out.

In the fall of 1920 she was suddenly thrown a lifeline: a Dutch workers' association had taken the initiative to set up and aid program for Austrian working class children. These children could come to the Netherlands for a number of months to regain their strength, and Hermine was one of the lucky ones, permitted to go along. On a cold winterday in December 1920, a train filled with weakened Viennese children departed for the unknown town of Leiden, in the unknown country of the Netherlands.

The family Nieuwenburg soon started calling Hermine Miep, a more casual, informal name. Miep went to school, soon learnt to speak Dutch, and by the spring of 1921 was the best of her class.

More at [link]

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