In this excerpt, Miep Gies recounts the moment that Otto Frank asked her to assist his family and the Van Pels family after going into hiding in the rear annex of the office premises on Prinsengracht.

In this excerpt, Miep Gies describes the morning of the sixth of July, 1942. On her bicycle and in the pouring rain, she meets Margot Frank at Merwedeplein to take her to the Secret Annex. The rest of the family would follow later that morning.

At the invitation of the hiders, Miep and Jan Gies spent a night in the Secret Annex. Miep describes this special experience in this excerpt.

Miep always visited the Secret Annex in the morning to collect the shopping list; she usually didn't come in the afternoon. When she decided, on a quiet afternoon at the office, to drop in unannounced, she came upon Anne, thoroughly engrossed in her writing. In this excerpt, Miep recounts this confrontation.

From the kitchen (which doubled as the dining room and the bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. Van Pels), Miep describes the uncomfortable situation that occurred every day, when she came to the Annex to pick up the shopping list. The hiders would be awaiting her arrival anxiously. 

Besides the daily grocery shopping, Miep always delivered the letters that Fritz Pfeffer wrote to his wife, and vice versa. For Pfeffer, Miep was his only go-between with his non-Jewish wife who continued to live in their own home elsewhere in the city.

Seated at her former desk in the current Anne Frank house, Miep Gies describes the fourth of August, 1944: the fearful day on which the eight hiders and two of their helpers were arrested. Miep's Viennese origins saved her from being arrested.

In this excerpt, Miep Gies describes the return of Otto Frank in the summer of 1945. Mr. Frank would continue to live with Miep and Jan until 1953. Miep also talks about the day in 1947 when she finally had the courage to read Anne Frank's diary, of which a second edition had already been published.