Miep Gies and the Rescue of Anne Frank's Diary

This program pays tribute to the woman who sheltered Anne Frank for three years and then rescued her now-famous diary. Miep Gies oversaw the “secret annex” where the Frank family was housed, while sheltering another Jewish person in her own home. Meet Gillian Walnes Perry who knew Miep Gies well and accompanied her to the Academy Awards and Meeg Pincus who wrote a delightful book on Miep Gies for young people.

Registration for this program will close on Thursday, October 21 at 10 PM ET. Instructions and links will be sent to all registrants on Friday, October 22 and again on the morning of the program.
Register here.

Meet the Panel
In 1990, Gillian Walnes Perry set up the Anne Frank Trust UK with friends and family of the late Otto Frank. She has spoken at the UN in front of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and at 10 Downing Street, the UK Houses of Parliament and most recently the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. She is the author of The Legacy of Anne Frank (2018) and The Social History of English Afternoon Tea (forthcoming). In 2010 Gillian was honored for her educational work by Her Majesty The Queen and was inducted as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

Meeg Pincus is the author of Miep and the Most Famous Diary: The Woman Who Rescued Anne Frank’s Diary (A Mighty Girl “Best Books of 2019” Pick, “highly recommended” by the Jewish Book Council, with starred reviews from Kirkus and School Library Journal). She has also authored 24 other nonfiction picture books about “solutionaries” who help people, animals, and the planet. Meeg is a long-time nonfiction writer/editor (from newspapers and magazines to books), educator (from university and elementary classrooms to homeschool), and diverse books advocate. She lives in Southern California and can be found online at www.MeegPincus.com.

Sharon Douglas is the CEO of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect and is a philanthropist, business advisor, and educator. In 1999, she was a member of the delegation to the United Nations for the Anne Frank Declaration of Peace and has for the past two decades represented the Anne Frank Center at numerous events in England and the Netherlands. A long-standing board member of the Anne Frank Center, Sharon also serves as the Secretary of the Board, and, with her husband Preston Douglas, was the 2016 winner of the Spirit of Anne Frank Distinguished Advocates Award. Sharon holds a BA in Education, with graduate study at Queens College and St. John’s University.

Mariana Abrantes, who will moderate the panel, is the Board Treasurer of the Sousa Mendes Foundation. Coming from a village in central Portugal, she studied Economics at UC-Berkeley and earned an MA from Princeton University. After training and working in Chase Manhattan Bank, she returned to Portugal, where she worked at the European Investment Bank. She also served in the Portuguese government’s Ministries of Transport and Health, and on the Boards of international investment funds and the Fulbright Commission Portugal. She is a dual Portuguese-US citizen.