“Miep looks like a pack mule. She goes out nearly everyday in search of vegetables, and then cycles back with her purchases in large shopping bags. She’s also the one who brings five library books with her every Saturday.”–The Diary of Anne Frank, July 11, 1943

The funeral service for Miep Gies was attended by hundreds yesterday in Amsterdam and condolences have been pouring in from all over the world on the Anne Frank Museum’s virtual condolence register. Gies, the last surviving member of the group who helped protect Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis, died on Monday at the age of 100.

She and other employees of Frank’s father, Otto, supplied food to the family as they hid in a secret annex above the business premises in Amsterdam. Ultimately, it was Miep Gies who discovered the pages of Anne’s diary on the floor after the family had been discovered and dispatched to a concentration camp.

In a 1998 interview, Gies recalled that after removing the pages, she did not read them immediately, telling herself at the time: “These may belong to a child, but even children have a right to privacy.” She saved them, hoping that one day she would be able to give them back, but after the young girl’s death, she returned them to Otto Frank. Miep and Otto eventually compiled the entries into the bestselling diary that was published in 1947.