National Geographic for Disney/Dusan Martincek
My copy of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl is in pieces, the brittle pages held together with a rubber band. It’s just a Scholastic paperback bought in 1969—on its 66th printing. This copy has been cried over, carted around the country, and reread many times, most recently after touring the sets built to replicate Anne’s world.
Years ago, returning from an assignment in Africa, I scheduled a layover in Amsterdam to visit the Secret Annex. I waited hours in a drizzle to climb those steep, narrow steps to the 500 square feet where eight people hid from the Nazis. So, I’ve thought about Anne Frank—her words and her world that is no more—for over half a century.
Yet, while I recognized the name Miep Gies, I did not know what a hero she was until I heard about A Small Light.