The story of the heroic acts of Miep and Jan Gies, the couple who helped hide the Frank family. Courtesy of National Geographic.The time FINALLY came. I watched A SMALL LIGHT (2023), the much-anticipated history series about the life of Miep Gies, her husband, Jan, and the courageous, incredible efforts they made in hiding the Frank family at the height of the Second World War. The eight-part series, presented by National Geographic and now streaming on Disney+, premiered way back in May. So, why the long wait on my end? Well, to be honest, I thought I knew this story already. I thought I knew enough about Anne Frank, her diary, and the gutting reality of how close this family was to surviving the war before being found. I’ve read the diary and visited the Anne Frank House. I know how this tragic story ends, and Anne Frank’s story has been made ad nauseum in cinema, TV, and plays. Also, did I really want to watch such a sad story?
Sometimes I wonder that, whether I should subject myself to good shows that I know are going to crush my soul. I love dramas, but watching a non-fiction story about one of the most unforgivable atrocities of mankind can be challenging, for sure. So I waited, and then after October 7, I made it my mission to start A SMALL LIGHT to remind myself that while there is evil in this world, there is also kindness. There are individuals out there, everyday people, who see an injustice being done and work to stop it. We are all hurting from the war in Israel, and feeling hopeless about the situation only worsens our days. Shows like this one must be seen because they encourage hope. HOPE. That’s a word I use every day. A SMALL LIGHT, one of the best shows I’ve seen this year, emphasizes the power of the human spirit. Even though things are terrible right now across the globe, shows like this inspire us to believe that everything will get better. All we can do is choose kindness. All we can do is hope.
Now, and this is an error on my end, A SMALL LIGHT, created by Tony Phelan and Joan Rater, is not a show about Anne Frank. In fact, Anne and her family, apart from Otto (the father), are very minor characters. This is about Miep (pronounced like “meep”), the non-Jewish heroine who risked her life to save the Franks in 1940s Amsterdam. She is played by Bel Powley, one of the most criminally underrated actors of our time. I remember Powley from two movies, The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015) and The King of Staten Island (2020). In the former, she plays the provocative role of a teenager who has an affair with her mother’s boyfriend, played by Alexander Skarsgård. It’s a daring, outstanding performance from such a young woman. Critics continued to laud her five years later in The King of Staten Island, Judd Apatow’s dark comedy starring Pete Davidson. In that film, she plays Davidson’s love interest, nailing a Brooklyn accent (Powley is British in real life) while delivering outrageous lines. She is an actor with instant charisma, someone who you just somehow instantly fall in love with.
Powley further proves her versatility in A SMALL LIGHT, giving a tour-de-force performance as the real-life Miep Gies. (Fun fact: Miep lived to be 100.) When the show starts off, we learn that Miep is already a friendly, happy-go-lucky young woman living in Amsterdam. Originally from Vienna, she was adopted by a Dutch family. Unmarried with little to no experience in the workplace, her own parents ask her to get married to her brother, Casmir (Laurie Kynaston), who is secretly gay.
“It’s OK because you two aren’t actually related!” her parents reason.
Miep just rolls her eyes. She has an excellent sense of self-worth and confidence, even pushing away Jan (Joe Cole), a man who comes onto her, just because she’s not in the mood.
“I thought you were pompous,” she later tells him, the guy who soon becomes her husband.
One day, she walks into town and applies to be a secretary at Opekta, a pectin and spices company. The boss, Otto Frank (Liev Schreiber), is a soft-spoken, kind man with a dry sense of humor. Miep’s experience in “pectin and spices” is little to no. Her only job, she explains, was as a “football assistant” at her school. Otto takes a liking to Miep’s bubbly personality and hires her, having her make jam daily.
Miep bonds more with her boss upon learning that his family and he had to flee Germany once the Nazis came to power. As not just an orphan but a refugee as well, she understands how incredibly disheartening it is to not feel “welcome.” For example, although Miep and Jan love each other, they only got married so she could get Dutch citizenship. Like Otto, she herself struggles to not be kicked out of her own home.
At the beginning of the story, the war is already going on, although the Netherlands are neutral. Hitler’s reign has started, but nothing feels as bad as it will eventually become. That’s always the eerie thing about Holocaust stories. What’s so good – and we see this in a lot of Holocaust films and TV series – is how everything starts off semi-safe before getting infinitely worse. We know that the Franks were forced to leave Germany. We know that Hitler hates Jews and antisemitism is on the rise, but no one sees it as an imminent threat. It’s as if people, Jewish or not, go, “Oh yeah, it’s bad right now. Just be safe out there. We’ll be fine.” Everyone is taking precaution, yet what they hear could simply be rumors. How would they have known that Hitler would go this extreme?
We all know the outcome, of course, regarding the Frank family. On May 15, 1940, the Dutch capitulate to the Nazis. Otto confirms with Miep that his wife, daughters, and he will go into hiding. She agrees to help conceal them on the top floor of the Opekta building. At this point, she has already become like a big sister to Anne (Billie Boullet) and her sister, Margot (Ashley Brooke). As fear escalates in the family, Miep transforms from a friend to a savior for the Franks, all the while her friends become increasingly dispassionate towards Hitler’s barbaric acts.
Jan, at first, seems a little less concerned than his wife regarding the antisemitic laws. It isn’t that he supports the Nazi Party. He just fears for his wife’s safety. Let’s not forget that even if you weren’t Jewish but a political dissenter, you would be put right in a camp or shot on the spot. As we soon see, however, Jan becomes as big a hero as his wife, joining the Dutch Resistance and hiding more Jews, including children, outside the hiding spot.
After bingeing A SMALL LIGHT, I can confirm that Miep and Jan are now my new favorite onscreen couple. Truly. What a beautiful, inspiring, absolutely heroic duo. You forget you’re watching Powley and Cole and believe you’re seeing these heroes for real, two ordinary individuals who stood up to barbarity. Besides Otto, the Frank family did not survive the Holocaust, but that doesn’t mean that the Gieps failed. They kept this family alive for as long as they possibly could. More than that, they faced the biggest threat in the world head-on, fearless and defiant. Can you imagine the hundreds of people who saw their Jewish neighbors being taken away and didn’t do anything to stop it out of fear? Not Miep and Jan.
If there’s one criticism people may have with A SMALL LIGHT, it’s that Miep and Jan have British accents while everyone else has Dutch ones. Why was this decision made? I really don’t know. This happens a lot in movies. If you watch any old-fashioned epic set during the Roman Empire, for example, why do some characters speak British and others with an American accent? Or just an accent in general? A SMALL LIGHT is appropriate for all ages, in my opinion, so perhaps the choice of the British accents was to make it simpler for children to comprehend. I remember when The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2007), described as a “children’s Holocaust movie,” was released, it was criticized because everyone – the Nazis included – was British. British Nazis! What?!
My opinion? Don’t let this bother you in A SMALL LIGHT. There may even be other inaccuracies I don’t know about. (Was Miep’s brother, Casmir, really gay? Or was this made up for the show?) The point of this show isn’t precise accuracy but its message itself: be a good person. Be kind. Help your neighbors. Be your own Miep.
A SMALL LIGHT is now available to stream on Disney+.