MIEP GIES - FIRST DAY COVER SIGNED CO-SIGNED BY: HENK (JAN AUGUSTUS) GIES - HFSID 29387

[ANNE FRANK] MIEP GIES and HENK GIES
Both sign a First Day Cover honoring UNITAR
First Day Cover signed: "Miep Gies" and "Gies" by her husband, Henk, 6½x3¾. United Nations FDC honoring UNITAR-Institure for Training and Research, four 13-cent stamps affixed, pictorially postmarked United Nations, February 10, 1969, FIRST DAY OF ISSUE. For over two years during WWII, at considerable risk to herself, MIEP GIES (1909-2010), born Hermine Santrouschitz, brought clothing, books and news to the Frank family and several other Jews hiding in the annex of Otto Frank's Amsterdam office. Her husband HENK GIES (1905-1993) was also actively involved in aiding Jews in hiding from the Nazis. When the Nazis discovered the hiding place on Aug. 4, 1944, Miep was in the office. Although questioned as the refugees were carted away to concentration camps, she was not held. A close friend of Anne Frank, Miep found the pages of the young girl's journal, left behind as "worthless" by the Nazis. Miep, the only person whose name was not encoded, preserved the diary, giving it to Anne's father, Otto Frank, the only survivor of the group, upon his return to Amsterdam on June 3, 1945. The Diary of Anne Frank, first published in Dutch in 1947, would eventually be translated into 55 languages and became an Academy Award-winning film (1960). In Meip's own words: "I am grateful I could save Anne Frank's diary. I could not save Anne's life, but I did save her diary, and by doing that I could help one of her most important dreams come true. In her diary, Anne Frank said 'I want to go on living even after my death.'". Fine condition.