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Disney+ series ‘A Small Light’ tells the Anne Frank story from the perspective of the woman who hid her
(JTA) — The short life of Anne Frank has inspired generations of filmmakers and television producers. The list of past productions range from “The Diary of Anne Frank” (1959), whose director George Stevens witnessed Nazi occupation as a U.S. army officer, to the Academy Award-winning documentary “Anne Frank Remembered” — featuring the only known footage of Anne — to the Emmy Award-winning dramatized miniseries “Anne Frank: The Whole Story” (2001).
On Monday night, viewers will get another TV version. But “A Small Light,” an eight-episode series premiering on National Geographic and streaming Tuesday on Disney+, tells the story from a new perspective: through the eyes of the woman who hid the Frank family.
Miep Gies was an independent 24-year-old with a busy social calendar and a dance club membership when she began working for Anne Frank’s father Otto in 1933 at Opekta, his successful jam business in Amsterdam. As Jews were rounded up and deported from the Netherlands in 1942, her Jewish boss asked if she would be willing to hide his family in an annex above the office, and she did not hesitate.
“A Small Light” stars Bel Powley as Gies, Joe Cole as her husband Jan Gies and Liev Schreiber as Otto Frank. It’s named for a quote from the real Gies, who once said that she did not like to be called a hero because “even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can turn on a small light in a dark room.”
That metaphor had literal meaning for the Frank family and four others in the secret annex, who spent two years in a dark 450-square-foot space behind a hinged bookcase. Gies, her husband and four other employees of Otto Frank secretly kept eight Jews alive while running his business downstairs. Gies brought them food and library books, using black market ration cards and visiting several different grocers to avoid suspicion. Anne Frank said in her diary, “Miep is just like a pack mule, she fetches and carries so much.”
In the series, the “dark room” is seen less than Gies’ frenzied bicycle trips across Amsterdam, as she tries to sustain the appearance of a normal life. Her secret pushes her away from friends and family, while her marriage strains under the weight of ever-looming disaster. The creators of “A Small Light” sought to recreate a hero as a modern, flawed, at times even annoying person.
“She’s not some kind of saint,” executive producer Joan Rater told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “She had moods, she had a new marriage, she wanted to hang out with friends. She wanted to take a day off and she couldn’t.”
“I think everyone can relate to Miep,” said Powley, an English-Jewish actress known for starring in several British shows and in American films such as “The King of Staten Island.” “She was just an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances.”
Although “A Small Light” is rife with tense scenes and suspense, the producers fashioned it with young audiences in mind. The show conspicuously avoids the explicit violence and horror typically expected of its subject matter, leaving out concentration camps and murders. Rater and co-creator Tony Phelan wanted children like their own to watch the series. While they were writing it, their daughter was the same age as Anne was when she was writing her diary.
Some young viewers have seen Anne’s story being swept up in literary purges across U.S. school districts, as part of the debate over what should be taught in American classrooms. Earlier this month, a Florida high school removed an illustrated adaptation of her diary after determining that references to her sexuality were “not age appropriate.” The same edition was previously yanked from a Texas school district, although it was reinstituted after public outcry. Meanwhile, a Tennessee school board banned “Maus,” Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about his father’s experience in the Holocaust, after objections over curse words and nudity last year.
The name “Anne Frank” has long been synonymous with Holocaust education as her diary remains one of the world’s most-read books, with translations in over 70 languages. But the “relatable” rescuer presents another appealing way to teach children about one of the most wretched chapters in human history, said Brad Prager, a professor of German and film studies at the University of Missouri.
“It is the message that people like to hear,” Prager told the JTA. “If you ask a fourth-grader why we watch TV and movies — well, this is so that you can learn to do the right things, or you can learn that in certain circumstances anyone can be a hero.”
Liev Schreiber plays Otto Frank and Amira Casar plays Edith Frank in “A Small Light.” (National Geographic for Disney/Dusan Martincek)
A broader lens on the Netherlands during World War II is less palatable. The Germans and their Dutch collaborators implemented a highly effective system of persecution: Between 1942 and 1944, about 107,000 Dutch Jews were deported primarily to Auschwitz and Sobibor, then murdered. Only 5,200 of them survived.
Although Gies did everything she could to save the Jews in her care, the unwritten ending to Anne’s diary is well-known. Three days after her last entry in August 1944, Dutch police officers led by SS officer Karl Josef Silberbauer raided the annex. Gies escaped arrest by observing that she and Silberbauer shared a hometown.
“My luck was that the police officer in charge came from Vienna, the same town where I was born,” she said in a 1997 interview with Scholastic. “I noticed this from his accent. So, when he came to interrogate me, I jumped up and said, as cheerfully as I could, ‘You are from Vienna? I am from Vienna too.’ And, although he got very angry initially, it made him obviously decide not to arrest me.”
In a valiant last-ditch effort, Gies walked into the German police office the next day and attempted to buy her friends’ freedom. She was unsuccessful.
Gies found Anne’s notebooks and papers strewn on the annex floor. Without reading them, she gathered and tucked the writings into a drawer, hoping to return them to their owner. Germany had all but lost the war already, with Allied troops less than 250 miles from Amsterdam.
The Franks were packed on the last train ever to leave the Westerbork transit camp for the Auschwitz extermination camp. Otto was separated from his wife Edith and daughters Anne and Margot on the Auschwitz platform. In October, the girls were transported to Bergen-Belsen, and Edith succumbed to starvation in January 1945. Her daughters died of typhus a month later, when Anne was 15 years old.
Some studies have suggested that knowledge about the Holocaust is diminishing. In 2020, the Claims Conference found that 63% of Millenial and Gen Z Americans (ages 18-39) did not know that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. More than 10% did not recall ever hearing about the Holocaust, while 11% believed that Jews caused it. Another Claims Conference survey reported that despite living in the country where Anne hid from the Nazis, a majority of Dutch people did not know the Holocaust took place there.
“In a time that antisemitism is on the rise and there are more displaced people in the world than there ever have been before, it couldn’t be a better time to re-explore this part of history, but through the lens of this ordinary young woman,” said Powley.
While “A Small Light” celebrates the power of the individual, the fate of Anne Frank also represents the failure of the whole world, said Prager. By centering Gies’ perspective, he said, the series risks making Anne a peripheral character in her own brutally aborted story.
“When you decenter Anne Frank, one thing is that you lose the Jewish perspective on the persecution,” he said.
Otto Frank, the sole survivor from the annex, appeared at Jan and Miep Gies’ doorstep after the war and ended up living with them for over seven years. In July 1945, Gies watched as he received the notice that his children were dead.
“He took it in his hands and suddenly he became eerily quiet,” Gies said in an interview for the Anne Frank House. “You cannot explain it, it was a silence that speaks. I looked up. He was white as a sheet. And he handed me the letter.”
Gies read the piece of paper, stood up and opened her desk drawer. “I took all the diaries, with all the separate sheets and everything and handed them over to Mr. Frank,” she said.
She told him, “This is your daughter Anne’s legacy.”
In 2010, Gies died at 100 years old. Every year on Aug. 4 — the day the Franks were arrested — she stayed at home, drew her curtains and did not answer the phone or doorbell.
Powley believes the show’s angle gives a fresh perspective on “your mom’s dusty copy of Anne Frank’s diary.” She approached the role of Gies with a heavy sense of responsibility.
“I feel a deeper connection to this story than I have with other projects,” she said. “This offer came to me on Holocaust Memorial Day and it immediately had that special feeling to it. My grandma, the Jewish matriarch of my family, died during COVID. I feel that she would be proud.”
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Michigan Democrats Nominate Lawyer Who Praised Hezbollah for Top University Post
A sign at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Photo: Ken Lund.
The Michigan Democratic Party nominated attorney attorney Amir Makled over incumbent Jewish Regent Jordan Acker on Sunday, drawing fresh scrutiny towards Makled’s defense of international terrorist organizations and anti-Israel posture.
Makled, a Dearborn-based civil rights attorney who has been outspoken in support of divestment from Israel, won the party’s nomination for one of two regent seats up for election this year, defeating Acker, who had become a frequent target of pro-Palestinian activists over his opposition to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) efforts on campus.
The contest has drawn national attention because of the unusually broad authority held by University of Michigan regents, who are elected statewide and oversee the university’s finances, investments, executive leadership and major institutional policy decisions. The eight-member board plays a central role in decisions ranging from presidential oversight to responses to campus protest movements and demands for divestment.
For months, anti-Israel student activists and progressive organizers had pressed for changes to the board, arguing the university should divest from companies tied to Israel amid the war in Gaza. Acker, one of the board’s most vocal opponents of divestment, became a particular focus of that pressure campaign. In December 2024, pro-Hamas activists targeted Acker’s home with violent demonstrations, breaking his windows and spray-painting his car “Divest Free Palestine.” The vandals also spray-painted an inverted red triangle on Acker’s car, a symbol used to indicate support for the Hamas terrorist group.
Makled, who represented a student arrested during the university’s 2024 anti-Israel encampment protests, had argued publicly that the university should reconsider its investment policies regarding Israel. His nomination, however, also drew scrutiny after resurfaced and later-deleted social media posts in which he appeared to praise Hezbollah and shared antisemitic content. The Michigan chapter of the Service Employees International Union reportedly withdrew its endorsement following the controversy.
An investigation by The Detroit News revealed that Makled was found to have deleted social media posts praising leaders of the Hezbollah terrorist organization. One of the posts referred to slain Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah as a “martyr.” He also reposted antisemitic messages from far-right commentator Candace Owens which referred to Israelis as “demons” who “lie, cheat, murder and blackmail.”
Supporters of Acker have argued the outcome reflects a broader deterioration in support for Israel and tolerance of antisemitism within Democratic politics, particularly among younger and more progressive voters. Some also noted that Paul Brown, Acker’s non-Jewish running mate who had similarly opposed divestment efforts, was renominated while Acker was not, making the result especially symbolic for many Jewish Democrats.
The race underscores how university governance battles have become a new front in national political fights over Israel. While university divestment decisions are often constrained by legal and fiduciary obligations, regents can shape investment policy, institutional messaging and the university’s overall posture toward such campaigns.
With eight regents serving staggered terms and only two seats on the ballot this cycle, a single election does not determine the university’s investment policy outright. But activists on both sides increasingly view these races as critical long-term contests over whether public universities will resist or embrace institutional divestment from Israel.
As the general election approaches, the regent race is likely to remain a closely watched test of how far the Democratic Party’s internal debate over Israel is reshaping not only national politics, but the leadership of major American universities. Recent polls indicate that Democratic constituents have rapidly shifted away from supporting Israel
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Rahm Emanuel joins calls for end to US ‘financial aid’ to Israel
(JTA) — Rahm Emanuel has joined growing calls for the United States to end subsidies tied to its military sales to Israel, arguing that Israel should purchase weapons on the same terms as other U.S. allies.
“The days of taxpayers subsidizing Israel militarily, that’s over,” Emanuel said during an appearance on Bill Maher’s HBO Max show “Real Time.” “No more financial aid.”
Emanuel is the Jewish former mayor of Chicago who is seen as a likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidate. His comments come months after he said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government bore responsibility for the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza last summer.
Now, as support for Israel hits a record low among Democrats and party leaders increasingly move away from the United States’ longstanding backing of the country, calls to end U.S. military aid to Israel are gaining traction.
Last week, all but seven Senate Democrats voted to block the sales of certain weapons to Israel, marking a doubling in the number of lawmakers backing similar resolutions in just two years.
Emanuel, whose father was born in Jerusalem and who volunteered as a civilian with the Israeli army during the Gulf War in the 1990s, told Maher that Israel should be able to fund its own military — and implied that it might not meet the United States’ standards for being able to purchase U.S.-made weapons.
“Israel is a very wealthy nation. There should be no more taxpayer support for what they want to do and they get the same deal that any one of our allies do,” Emanuel said. “They have to abide by the laws of the United States if they’re going to buy X weapons, and that’s how it should be constructed.”
In January, Netanyahu said for the first time that he wanted to “taper off” U.S. military aid to Israel over the next decade until it reaches zero. His pledge was quickly met with support from South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who said at the time, “We need not wait 10 years.”
Speaking of the joint U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, Emanuel said the move amounted to a “violation of a rule Israel’s had for 78 years,” arguing that Israel had long sought to avoid pulling the United States into conflicts with its neighbors.
“The United States should never spill any blood for the state of Israel’s security,” Emanuel said. “What happened here going into Iran with the United States and Israel fighting together, which has never happened in 78 years, is a major change in policy for the State of Israel, which comes with political risk, and now they’re seeing it.”
The post Rahm Emanuel joins calls for end to US ‘financial aid’ to Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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Michigan Democrats nominate Eli Savit, progressive Jewish prosecutor, for state attorney general
(JTA) — A progressive Jewish county prosecutor won the endorsement of Michigan’s state Democratic Party over the weekend in his bid for state attorney general, at a convention that also spotlighted deep divides over Israel within the party.
Eli Savit beat out another county prosecutor for the chance to succeed Dana Nessel, the state’s current AG, who is also a Jewish Democrat. He will be the Democratic nominee on November’s ballot.
Unlike Savit, who remains largely embraced by the left, Nessel has made enemies among the state’s pro-Palestinian activist contingent for her role in aggressively prosecuting University of Michigan encampment protesters.
The 41-year-old Savit has since 2021 been the prosecutor of Washtenaw County, which includes Ann Arbor and the university. A former clerk for Jewish Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, he was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and elected in a mini-wave of progressive prosecutors that also included Chesa Boudin in San Francisco.
While Boudin was forced out following a 2022 recall, Savit has remained in Washtenaw’s good graces as he’s pushed progressive proposals including decriminalizing consentual sex work, not seeking prosecutions for psychedelics consumption and curbing cash bail.
Savit has called himself “a bona fide American Jew” and has invoked his identity when opposing policies such as President Trump’s first-term 2019 executive order defining Judaism as a nationality as part of an effort to target BDS movements on college campuses. He has said his father’s family came from “shtetls in Russia, Poland, and the Ukraine,” and that his mother, originally from Iowa, converted to Orthodox Judaism. He also wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal in 2016 to dispute a column wondering why more Jews don’t vote Republican.
Savit also played a part in prosecuting the university’s pro-Palestinian protesters, although his role was smaller than Nessel’s. In 2024 his office filed felony charges against four protesters for allegedly assaulting police officers during a sit-in at the university president’s house. Some activists accused Savit and his assistant prosecutor of “betraying their constituents” and “doing so to protect the university’s investments in genocide and apartheid.” (Two of the charged were permitted to enter a diversion program for young offenders, while the other two pled down to misdemeanors.)
When it came to the more high-profile charges against some of the school’s encampment participants, Savit allowed Nessel’s statewide office to handle the cases. Nessel was then accused of being “biased,” a charge she labeled as antisemitic; she ultimately dropped the charges against the protesters.
The attorney who defended the protesters, Amir Makled, also won the Democratic Party’s nomination Sunday in his bid to oust a Jewish, pro-Israel member of the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents. Makled won the party’s support despite reports of past social media activity in which he had retweeted antisemitic conspiracy theorist Candace Owens and praised Hezbollah’s assassinated leader.
Savit also unreservedly condemned the Temple Israel attack in Michigan as antisemitic and stated, “There is a lot of grief, a lot of pain from people that may have loved ones, may have relatives who are in the regions, may even have lost loved ones and relatives. But at the end of the day, that certainly does not give license to launch attacks on Jewish community spaces.”
His statements drew a contrast with Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, also a favorite of the state’s progressive wing, whose own condemnation of the attack had also invoked Israel’s war in Lebanon.
The post Michigan Democrats nominate Eli Savit, progressive Jewish prosecutor, for state attorney general appeared first on The Forward.