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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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Crypto’s Role in Iran’s Global Terrorism Exposed by New Lawsuit Against Binance
The logo of cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Illustration: Reuters/Dado Ruvic
Cryptocurrency has come under increasing scrutiny for its alleged role in subverting the United States’ sanctions against Iranian state-sponsored terrorism, with the world’s top platform receiving an unwanted spotlight this week.
On Monday, lawyers in North Dakota sued Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao, alleging the company had facilitated more than $1 billion in funding to designated terrorist groups backed by the Islamic regime in Iran. The US federal lawsuit was filed on behalf of victims of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The suit represents the latest instance of cryptocurrency allegedly playing a role in Iran’s efforts to destroy the Jewish state. Leaders of Iran and its network of terrorist groups named in the complaint, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), routinely declare their goal of wiping Israel off the map.
Israel has previously clashed with Binance in its counter-terrorism efforts. In May 2023, the Jewish state seized nearly 200 accounts on the platform linked to Islamist groups, including ISIS. In November 2022, researchers at Nobitex said that since 2018, Binance had processed $7.8 billion through Iran-linked accounts.
This week’s suit adds further evidence of the recurring link between Iranian terrorism and cryptocurrency, identifying the high profit potential for those willing to attempt to dodge US sanctions against terror financing.
Binance has declined to discuss the lawsuit but told Reuters that “we comply fully with internationally recognized sanctions laws.”
Jonathan Missner, the attorney who represents the Oct. 7 victims and their families named as plaintiffs in the suit, said that Binance’s alleged facilitating of payments to terror groups “was not a compliance” but rather “a business model.”
“Our investigation shows that Binance built systems designed to evade oversight, using its off-chain network and weak controls to move enormous sums for sanctioned groups,” he said in a statement.
The lawsuit states that “by knowingly moving and concealing the movement of hundreds of millions of dollars for Hamas, the IRGC [Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], Hezbollah, and PIJ, Defendants Binance Holdings Limited, Changpeng Zhao, and Guangying ‘Heina’ Chen provided pervasive and systemic assistance to these terrorist organizations.”
Chen is described in the suit as a co-founder of Binance and “de facto CFO.” The lawsuit charges that Zhao and Chen “materially contributed to the Oct. 7 attacks and to subsequent terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas, Hezbollah, and PIJ.”
One of the plaintiffs named in the suit is Eyal Balva, whose son Omer died in combat following the Oct. 7 atrocities while serving in the Israel Defense Forces. “Binance’s platform moved the money that helped fund the violence that destroyed our family,” he said.
Zhao and Binance — the world’s largest crypto trading platform with $300 billion in daily trades and more than 280 million users — have previously faced penalties for criminality. As part of a 2023 settlement agreement with the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Binance paid $4.3 billion in fines and restitution. Zhao was previously convicted of money laundering and served four months imprisonment. US President Donald Trump pardoned Zhao, with analysts noting the decision came following a sizable investment by Binance into the Trump family Crypto exchange platform World Liberty Financial.
The lawsuit also notes a money laundering scheme involving transferring gold from Venezuela to Iran to overcome American sanctions, and that Binance “pitched itself to terrorist organizations, narcotics traffickers, and tax evaders as beyond the reach of any single country’s laws or regulations.”
On Wednesday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi put out a statement condemning the possibility of potential US military action against Venezuela, labeling the Trump administration’s posture a “bullying approach.”
The filing against Binance comes in a year in which Australian authorities have highlighted the alleged role of cryptocurrency in directing antisemitic hate crimes in Melbourne and Sydney, prompting the expulsion of Iran’s ambassador in August.
Australian Security Intelligence Organization (Asio) chief Mike Burgess said that his team had found connections “between the alleged crimes and the commanders in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC.”
He added, “They’re just using cut-outs, including people who are criminals and members of organized crime gangs to do their bidding or direct their bidding.”
Cryptocurrency has long functioned as a tool of Iran to evade US sanctions. The high energy costs from the so-called “mining” of cryptocurrency — powerful computers must run complex programs in order to generate additional tokens for trading — has put a strain on Iran’s electrical system. Mohammad Allahdad, Iran’s deputy director of power generation, said that the business practice “represents around 5 percent of total electricity consumption” and “it accounts for up to 20 percent of the current power deficit.”
Allahdad also warned that the heat from crypto mining devices was “intense” and could cause fires. “We’ve had multiple reports from fire departments about fires linked to mining rigs, some of which spread to neighboring homes,” he noted.
Now is potentially the worst time for fires in Iran, given a persistent devastating drought and ongoing government mismanagement of the water system. The situation has reached the point that Iran’s president said last week that the country had “no choice” but to evacuate and move the capital Tehran.
“The truth is, we have no choice left — relocating the capital is now a necessity,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a speech.
The US State Department recently noted that Iran has provided Lebanese Hezbollah with more than $100 million each month this year. Critics of the regime have pointed out that funds spent in the war effort to destroy Israel could have gone toward improving infrastructure to better support the civilian population. Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted that one-third of the water supply to Tehran is lost through leaks and theft.
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Mamdani Draws Fury After Naming Activist Booted From Women’s March for Antisemitism to Transition Team
Tamika Mallory at the Wilmington Public Library in Wilmington, Delaware, Sept. 19, 2024. Photo: Saquan Stimpson/Cal Sport Media/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Tamika Mallory, the former Women’s March co-chair who was forced out of the organization amid allegations of antisemitism, has been appointed to New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s transition team, according to newly released staffing lists.
Mallory was selected to serve on the Committee on Community Safety, one of several advisory bodies shaping the incoming mayoral administration’s approach to policing, public safety, and community relations. Her appointment has already drawn sharp criticism from Jewish communal organizations, which say the decision raises serious concerns at a time of rising antisemitic incidents across the city.
Mamdani himself has also faced allegations of antisemitism, and his electoral victory earlier this month raised alarm bells among Jewish New Yorkers, many of whom expressed concern about their future with an ardent anti-Israel activist in office.
Mallory resigned from the Women’s March leadership in 2019 after extensive reporting said that she and other senior figures had allowed antisemitic rhetoric to permeate the organization. A widely discussed investigative article at the time claimed Mallory referenced conspiracy theories portraying Jews as exploiters of black and brown communities and echoed false claims linking Jewish financiers to the transatlantic slave trade.
She denied making the statements but continued to face criticism for her longstanding praise of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has repeatedly made antisemitic remarks such as comparing Jews to termites, describing Judaism as a “dirty religion,” calling the Jewish people “Satan,” publicly questioned the Holocaust, sharing anti-Israel conspiracy theories, and blamed Jews for pedophilia and sex trafficking. Mallory called Farrakhan “the greatest of all time because of what he’s done in black communities.”
Transition team members typically serve in an advisory capacity, though their recommendations often help shape early policy direction.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a prominent Jewish civil rights organization, condemned the new appointment, arguing that Mallory is “simply the wrong choice” to join the Mamdani transition team, citing her “highly insensitive remarks about Jews and money.”
Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist who has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his young political career, has filled several transition committees with progressive activists, criminal-justice reform advocates, and academics associated with police abolition movements. His Community Safety Committee includes multiple figures known for their opposition to traditional law-enforcement models.
Jewish and allied leaders said the decision to include Mallory reinforces fears that the incoming administration may sideline concerns about antisemitism.
“New Yorkers are shocked to learn that Zohran Mandani has appointed Tamika Mallory to his team. Mallory is a notorious trafficker of Jew-hatred in America, a defender for Louis Farrakhan’s vicious vitriol against Jews,” The Lawfare Project, which provides legal services to victims of antisemitism, posted on social media. “We must be vigilant and carefully scrutinize who Mamdani appoints to key positions and, more importantly, what they do once in office. Protecting Jewish civil rights means taking action whenever they are violated.”
Mallory’s appointment isn’t the only one to draw concern due to allegations of antisemitism.
For example, Hassaan Chaudhary, an adviser to Mamdani who describes himself as the political director for the mayor-elect’s transition team, once used the word “Jew” as a slur. In 2012, he wrote Jew hoga tera baap,” which means in English, “Jew will be your father.” He also referred to Israel as a “cancer which will be eliminated very soon.”
The appointments come as New York City has seen a major spike in anti-Jewish hate crimes over the last two years, following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel. According to police data, Jews were targeted in the majority of hate crimes perpetrated in the city last year. Meanwhile, pro-Hamas activists have held raucous — and sometimes violent — protests on the city’s college campuses, oftentimes causing Jewish students to fear for their safety.
Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist and anti-Zionist, is an avid supporter of boycotting all Israeli-tied entities who has been widely accused of promoting antisemitic rhetoric. He has repeatedly accused Israel of “apartheid” and “genocide”; refused to recognize the country’s right to exist as a Jewish state; and refused to explicitly condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which has been associated with calls for violence against Jews and Israelis worldwide.
A recently released Sienna Research Institute poll revealed that a whopping 72 percent of Jewish New Yorkers believe that Mamdani will be “bad” for the city. A mere 18 percent hold a favorable view of Mamdani. Conversely, 67 percent view him unfavorably.
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Jewish moderate Julie Menin claims victory as next City Council speaker
(JTA) — Julie Menin, a Jewish New York City Councilwoman in Manhattan, declared victory on Wednesday in the race for council speaker, positioning herself as a potential moderating influence on Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s progressive agenda.
The election does not officially happen until January, but Menin, a moderate Democrat who represents neighborhoods including the Upper East Side, announced that she had gained the support of a “super majority” of 36 votes out of the council’s 51 members.
“I am honored and humbled by the trust and faith that my colleagues have put in me to lead the City Council as a force of action for New York families,” Menin said in a statement on Wednesday.
If elected, Menin would be the first Jewish speaker in the City Council’s history.
The council serves as a separate branch from the mayoral office and is responsible for passing laws and controlling key aspects of the city’s budget, this year set at $116 billion. A supportive speaker is seen as essential to carrying out a mayor’s agenda.
Menin secured support from many moderate Democrats and Republicans. Her opponent, Brooklyn’s Crystal Hudson, has been backed by the council’s progressive bloc and is widely seen as more aligned with Mamdani, who takes office Jan. 1.
Menin, whose grandmother and mother survived the Holocaust before immigrating to New York City, has frequently advocated for Holocaust education and efforts to combat antisemitism as a councilwoman.
She has also made pro-Israel advocacy a part of her public image, marching in the Israel Day Parade in May to advocate for the release of the hostages and going on a solidarity trip to Israel to visit Kibbutz Kfar Aza in February 2024. (Mamdani has said he would not visit Israel or attend the Israel Day Parade as mayor.)
While Mamdani has frequently reiterated his commitments to protecting Jewish New Yorkers, his record of support for the boycott Israel movement and past anti-Israel rhetoric stoked fears in some Jewish New Yorkers during his campaign, including in Menin’s district, which supported his opponent.
Last week, after pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated against an Israeli immigration event at the Park East Synagogue, which is located in Menin’s district, Mamdani said that he believed “sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.” In contrast, Menin said that the protest was “not acceptable” in a post on X.
“Congregants must have the right to worship freely and to enter and exit their house of worship without impediment,” Menin wrote. “Protests must have reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions.”
But while Menin has been seen as a potential moderating force on Mamdani, she has also cast herself as willing to collaborate with the incoming mayor.
“With this broad five-borough coalition, we stand ready to partner with mayor-elect Mamdani’s administration and deliver on a shared agenda that makes New York more affordable through universal childcare, lowers rent and healthcare costs, and ensures that families across the city can do more than just get by,” Menin said in a statement.
The post Jewish moderate Julie Menin claims victory as next City Council speaker appeared first on The Forward.