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– Epilogue – A fter Anne Frank Remembered was finally com- pleted and published in English, it passed into more than twenty other languages. Dutch was one of these, and at an international press launch for the book in Amsterdam a sour Dutch journalist stood up and challenged Miep, saying the following: ‘Not to be disrespectful, Mrs. Gies, but why would you and your husband allow an American writer to take our very own story away from us?’ Miep locked eyes with the journalist and replied: ‘For the past forty years you and every other journalist who has interviewed us has asked us the same five questions. When Alison came to us she was the first who ever asked us a sixth question, then a seventh, and more. That is why.’ I had often wondered the same thing. I’d also wondered how I was able to find words to convince iron-willed Miep and Jan to allow me to write more than an article about their wartime deeds, culminating in two close years in their living room working together on our book, on preserving their memories. They had, ­after our initial, cordial interview, dug in their heels and adamantly resisted the idea of a book. 199
page 211
– FOUND AND LOST – Their reason: modesty. As they explained: ‘We didn’t do anything special. We did only what needed doing in a situation that was unjust. Many, many people here in Holland did what we did, even did more. Why should we receive special attention just because one of the people we cared for happened to be Anne Frank?’ I must have found the right words. If I have a talent, beside helping children find lost mittens, it has been as a miner, a midwife, a salvager of other people’s stories that seem to be on the brink of extinction. As a writer, I have tried to ‘translate’ what’s been rescued into words – words addressed sometimes to the living, sometimes to the dead, picking from the litter of bones, skulls, and relics tossed from graves by lackadaisical cemetery attendants. On catching sight of a skull, Hamlet asks the gravediggers: ‘Whose was it?’ And, when told that it belonged to someone he knew – the court jester Yorick – he laments, famously, ‘Alas poor Yorick . . . a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy, he hath borne me on his back a thousand times . . . Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.’ Like Hamlet’s, my own affection does not end with death. Nor is it lonely here, staying behind to exhume, examine bones, skulls (perhaps even my own), after other mourners have left. Before reinterring, though, I would like to wash each with wine – perfume too. My own life had never seemed worth translating: not 200

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– FOUND AND LOST –

Their reason: modesty. As they explained: ‘We didn’t do anything special. We did only what needed doing in a situation that was unjust. Many, many people here in Holland did what we did, even did more. Why should we receive special attention just because one of the people we cared for happened to be Anne Frank?’

I must have found the right words. If I have a talent, beside helping children find lost mittens, it has been as a miner, a midwife, a salvager of other people’s stories that seem to be on the brink of extinction. As a writer, I have tried to ‘translate’ what’s been rescued into words – words addressed sometimes to the living, sometimes to the dead, picking from the litter of bones, skulls, and relics tossed from graves by lackadaisical cemetery attendants.

On catching sight of a skull, Hamlet asks the gravediggers: ‘Whose was it?’ And, when told that it belonged to someone he knew – the court jester Yorick – he laments, famously, ‘Alas poor Yorick . . . a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy, he hath borne me on his back a thousand times . . . Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.’

Like Hamlet’s, my own affection does not end with death. Nor is it lonely here, staying behind to exhume, examine bones, skulls (perhaps even my own), after other mourners have left. Before reinterring, though, I would like to wash each with wine – perfume too.

My own life had never seemed worth translating: not

200

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