Anne Frank famously kept a diary describing her life as a Jewish girl during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. She and her family lived in a concealed room behind a bookcase for two years.

The Nazis eventually discovered the family and sent them to concentration camps including Auschwitz. She died in Bergen-Belsen at age 15.

Anne’s father, Otto, was the only one of the family to survive the Holocaust. He was instrumental in publishing his daughter’s diary after the war.

The rest is history. 

Key to Anne’s survival for those two years were the efforts of Otto’s secretary, a Catholic woman named Miep Gies. She risked imprisonment and even death in buying food for the family and secretly bringing it to their hiding place.

Gies devised elaborate ruses, such as obtaining illicit food ration cards, avoiding large purchases from any single grocer, and bringing the food to the hiding place at hours that would not attract suspicion.

After the war, Gies was dismissive of the personal risk to herself: “Over two million Holland people helped hide Jewish people in the Second World War, I am just doing what I can to help.”

Now, 80 years later, history reverberates in the Netherlands. Nazis of the 21^st century are openly chasing and beating the Jews on the streets of Amsterdam.

Lacking the courage of Miep Gies, the police response is unenergetic, and the governmental response is lackadaisical.

“Shame on them” does not even begin to reflect my sentiments.