skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal writing about the sex abuse scandal in the Church:
"There are three great groups of victims in this story. The first and most obvious, the children who were abused, who trusted, were preyed upon and bear the burden through life. The second group is the good priests and good nuns, the great leaders of the church in the day to day, who save the poor, teach the immigrant, and, literally, save lives. They have been stigmatized when they deserve to be lionized. And the third group is the Catholics in the pews—the heroic Catholics of America and now Europe, the hardy souls who in spite of what has been done to their church are still there, still making parish life possible, who hold high the flag, their faith unshaken. No one thanks those Catholics, sees their heroism, respects their patience and fidelity. The world thinks they're stupid. They are not stupid, and with their prayers they keep the world going, and the old church too."
A hero doesn't have to grab the flag and lead troops to victory. A hero doesn't have to invent a drug that saves millions. All a hero has to do is "the right thing" when it is required of them. A hero doesn't walk away when "the right thing" comes calling; they react instinctively. The ability to maintain their action over a long period of time in the face of possible death makes them something more than just a hero; it makes them bold, stouthearted and valiant.
Miep Gies was all of these and probably more. She and her husband Jan risked their lives over two long years to save the lives of others. They risked death every day and for what? To help others avoid certain death at the hands of the Nazis. The only reward they could hope for was the reward of knowing they did "the right thing".
Pray for the soul of Miep Gies and all those others that quietly fought the Satanic evils of Nazism. The greatest generation is slowly passing from the scene. I hope we can learn from them.
"She was born Hermine Santrouschitz on February 15 1909 into a German Roman Catholic family in Vienna, but was sent to the Netherlands when she was 11 to escape the food shortages in Austria. The family with which she lived in Leiden gave her the nickname Miep and later adopted her. By the outbreak of the Second World War she was working as an assistant to Otto Frank, the owner of a pectin manufacturing company in Amsterdam.
After the Nazi invasion of 1940, Frank prepared a secret annex behind a swinging bookcase in a room above the firm's offices at 263 Prinsengracht; and in July 1942 the family of four – Otto, his wife Edith and their daughters Margot and Anne – went into hiding, leaving a false trail indicating that they had fled to Switzerland. Soon afterwards they were joined by other Jews, the van Pels family and Miep Gies's family dentist, Fritz Pfeffer – eight people in all.
For two years Miep Gies and her husband Jan, a municipal employee whom she had married in 1941, risked their lives to smuggle in food and provisions and news from outside, begging, buying and bartering what they needed from farmers and shopkeepers. They were helped throughout by her colleagues Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman and Bep Voskuijl.
Miep acted as a confidante for the adolescent Anne, bringing her paper for her diary and, on one occasion, a pair of second-hand high-heeled shoes. The Gies's heroic feat of humanitarianism ended on August 4 1944, when the Frank family were betrayed (by a person whose identity remains unknown), arrested and sent to concentration camps."
The Telegraph
Posts
