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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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Why protests in Iran seem surprisingly pro-Israel
Iranian cities are engulfed in anti-regime protests, the largest in several years. Initially sparked by economic frustration, the demonstrations have quickly expanded to include broader grievances — particularly anger at Iran’s foreign policy. One chant heard repeatedly in videos circulating from inside Iran captures that anger succinctly: “Neither Gaza, nor for Lebanon — my life is only for Iran.”
The slogan refers to Iran’s long-standing support for armed groups across the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and militias in Iraq and Syria. Qassem Soleimani, the late commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, designed the strategy with the intention of encircling Israel with proxy forces on multiple fronts.
Today, many Iranians view that strategy as a drain on a collapsing economy. On December 28, the Iranian rial — the country’s currency — plunged against the U.S. dollar, intensifying a long-running economic crisis marked by soaring prices and an annual inflation rate of around 40 percent.
Beyond the billions of dollars Tehran has spent supporting these groups, the U.S. and European Union have imposed harsh sanctions targeting Iran’s proxy networks and nuclear program. Those sanctions have restricted Iran’s access to international banking, restricted oil exports, and discouraged foreign investment into the country, contributing to inflation and the steady erosion of the rial.
In June, Iranians came face to face with the consequences of the regime’s foreign policy when Israeli strikes across the country targeted missile and nuclear sites, as well as IRGC leaders. The 12-Day War severely disrupted daily life and resulted in the death of 436 Iranian civilians.
For many protesters, the connection feels direct: money spent sustaining proxy forces abroad brings harsher sanctions at home, raising prices, shrinking wages, and worsening daily life. With that in mind, the chant is less an endorsement of Israel than a rejection of a foreign policy that, in protesters’ eyes, prioritizes anti-Israel and anti-Western ideology over basic economic survival.
The return of monarchist symbolism
Many protesters are also calling for the return of the Pahlavi dynasty, which ruled Iran until the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Videos shared online show protesters chanting slogans in favor of the former monarchy or displaying symbols associated with it, including the pre-revolutionary Iranian flag.
The Pahlavi era was marked by rapid modernization and close ties with the United States and Israel, including a strategic alliance with Israel that consisted of economic and intelligence cooperation. At the same time, the period was also defined by political repression, censorship, and the use of secret police to silence dissent — factors that ultimately fueled the revolution that ended the monarchy.
The most prominent figure associated with the dynasty today is Reza Pahlavi, the Shah’s son, who lives in Maryland and has been outspokenly pro-Israel. Pahlavi has called for normalizing relations between Iran and Israel through what he has dubbed the “Cyrus Accords,” an expansion of the Abraham Accords. Pahlavi has commented that the “only two countries on this planet that can claim to have a biblical relationship” are “Iran and Israel.”
In April 2023, Pahlavi traveled to Israel, where he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, and paid a visit to the Western Wall, where he said he prayed “for the day when the good people of Iran and Israel can renew our historic friendship.” He even consulted Israeli water management scientists, whom he dubbed the “best experts in the field,” to help him develop a plan of action for Iran’s water crisis, which has also been a major point of contention for protestors. In June, Pahlavi’s daughter married Jewish American businessman Bradley Sherman, and the hora was danced at the reception.
On Thursday, Pahlavi called on Iranians to take to the streets en masse. Since his call to action, the protests have escalated significantly, though the extent of his influence inside Iran remains difficult to assess.
Many analysts caution that monarchist support inside Iran remains fragmented, and that Pahlavi is unlikely to emerge as a singular opposition leader. Still, the symbolism matters. The current protests have been driven in large part by young Iranians, many of whom have no direct memory of the Pahlavi era. The use of monarchist symbolism may signal not only nostalgia, but also an alternative vision of Iran’s place in the world — one less defined by permanent hostility toward Israel.
The post Why protests in Iran seem surprisingly pro-Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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God heard the cries of Israelites in Egypt. Who will respond to our devastation in Minnesota?
In this week’s Torah portion, Shemot, God hears the cries of the oppressed Israelites in Egypt and calls out to Moses through the form of a burning bush.
Today, here in Minnesota, cries of the oppressed can be heard, too. They come from all those who grieve the tragic loss of Renée Nicole Good, fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent on Wednesday morning in front of her wife and horrified neighbors. And they come from all those feeling fear and outrage as federal agents have increased their efforts to detain immigrants, acting with new violence and brutality as they do so.
Many of my fellow Minnesotans have been frightened to leave their homes. They are not going to the jobs they rely on to afford their basic needs, or attending worship services. Parents are scared to send their children to school. Schools, daycare centers and businesses are afraid to open, as ICE makes arrests on their doorsteps. Community members who have been eager to help are now fearful, in the wake of Good’s killing, that they, too, may be targeted, harassed, or even killed.
My own child’s elementary school moved recess indoors to protect vulnerable students and staff who are worried about their safety from ICE.
In Shemot, God calls to Moses to usher in an era of change for the Israelites desperate for relief from fear, violence and vicious retribution. Moses hesitates, asking “who am I?” to take on this monumental task. God assures him that he is not alone, because God will be with him throughout the journey.
As we enter this Shabbat, with the tragedy of Good’s death fresh in our minds, we must commit ourselves to hearing the cries of all who suffer among us. That is the first step toward healing and repairing the brokenness that so many now feel.
That repair will be a monumental task. But like Moses, we are not called to do it alone.
In fact, we must not try to. Instead, we must focus our efforts on building bonds in the face of terror — not letting that terror break our connections to one another.
The Jewish sages taught that, for our ancestors, sinat chinam — baseless hatred — led to internal fracture, civil war, the destruction of both Jewish temples, and our people’s forced exile from the land of Israel. Their warning is not abstract. It reminds us that societies collapse not only because of external threats, but also because of the consequences of unmitigated internal rage.
What’s needed to correct our dangerous path?
First, a strong pushback against those voices who have issued incomprehensible personal attacks against Good since her death. Too many federal officials and media personalities have not only failed to express empathy for a life lost, but also used her death to inflame polarization.
Our state desperately needs calm and clarity. Our leaders and our citizens must forcefully affirm that Good’s death was needless and tragic, and that we will not go along with attempts to rewrite that truth.
As part of this affirmation, we must call on the federal government to allow the professional and nonpartisan Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to fully participate in the investigation of Good’s death. No matter what findings are ultimately reached, the investigation’s credibility relies upon it being done in partnership with state and federal officials.
This event has proven what many of us already knew: The ongoing surge of more than 2,000 ICE agents into Minnesota is counterproductive to restoring public safety and public trust. Minnesotans desperately want to return to normalcy. We want to feel safe in going to school, to work, and to spend time with family and friends. ICE has brought fear and anxiety into our lives, not peace or justice. They must go.
Our country’s immigration system has been broken for decades. Congress has at points come close to reaching bipartisan, consensus-driven, comprehensive immigration reform, but political polarization has made such compromises all but impossible to reach.
We must redouble our efforts to build an immigration system based upon respect for the rule of law, compassion, and an understanding of the vital role that immigrants play in strengthening our society as a whole.
We ask our fellow Minnesotans to treat members of law enforcement, and the men and women of our Minnesota National Guard, with patience and kindness. And we urge our community to exercise compassion for the vulnerable in the days ahead.
As Jewish Americans, we have a long and proud history of supporting immigrant communities — remembering that we too were once strangers in a strange land. Not just our ancestors in ancient Egypt, whose anguish this week’s Torah portion recounts, but also here, in the U.S. We must reinvigorate that commitment — for the sake of Good’s memory, our immigrant neighbors, and the health of our whole society.
The post God heard the cries of Israelites in Egypt. Who will respond to our devastation in Minnesota? appeared first on The Forward.
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Mamdani Remains Silent on Pro-Hamas Synagogue Protest, Other NYC Lawmakers Issue Condemnations
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivers a speech during his inauguration ceremony in New York City, US, Jan. 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
Newly inaugurated New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has remained silent regarding an anti-Israel protest outside a Queens synagogue on Thursday evening that featured chants supporting Hamas and prompted nearby Jewish institutions to shut down out of safety concerns.
The demonstration took place outside Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills, where an event promoting Israeli real estate investments was scheduled. Dozens of protesters chanted slogans including “Globalize the intifada” and “Say it loud, say it clear, we support Hamas here,” according to video footage shared online. Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the architect behind the Oct. 7 massacres in Israel which killed roughly 1200 and resulted in the abduction of 250 others.
The protest also unfolded near the Yeshiva of Central Queens, leading synagogue leaders to cancel evening prayer services and local schools to dismiss students early. While the New York Police Department maintained a buffer zone and no major violence was reported, residents described the atmosphere as tense and intimidating.
A chorus of condemnation has come from city and state lawmakers since the protest.
State Assemblyman Sam Berger, whose district includes the synagogue, said the mayor’s failure to speak out was “deeply concerning,” arguing that city leadership has a responsibility to draw clear lines when protests target houses of worship.
“This wasn’t an abstract political rally,” Berger said. “It was outside a synagogue, in a residential Jewish neighborhood, with chants that glorify violence. The mayor should be unequivocal.”
Governor Kathy Hochul, by contrast, swiftly condemned the protest, calling the chants “disgusting” and emphasizing that support for Hamas has no place in New York.
“No matter your political beliefs, this type of rhetoric is disgusting, it’s dangerous, and it has no place in New York,” Hochul wrote.
NYC Council Speaker Julie Menin wrote that “openly and proudly sympathizing with Hamas, especially while standing in the largely Jewish community of Kew Gardens Hills, stokes fear and division.”
Mark Levine, NYC Comptroller, repudiated the demonstrations, saying they “cannot be normalized or excused.”
Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Bronx Democrat, also denounced the demonstration, saying rhetoric that praises terrorist organizations amounts to hate, not legitimate political speech.
Meanwhile, as criticism mounted from state and federal officials, Mamdani, who took office just days earlier, did not issue a direct statement condemning the protest or the rhetoric used by demonstrators.
The protest was organized by groups affiliated with the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation (PAL-Awda) NY/NJ, which has previously promoted demonstrations targeting Israel-related events. Organizers framed the rally as opposition to Israeli land sales, but Jewish leaders say the location and language crossed a line.
The episode echoes earlier controversies surrounding Mamdani, who has faced criticism in the past for what opponents describe as equivocation when anti-Israel protests occur near Jewish religious spaces. In a previous incident outside an Upper East Side synagogue, Mamdani criticized language used by the protesters while simultaneously condemning the synagogue for hosting real estate events.
The protest comes amid an alarming surge in antisemitic hate crimes across New York City.
Jews were targeted in the majority (54 percent) of all hate crimes perpetrated in New York City in 2024, according to data issued by the New York City Police Department (NYPD). A new report released on Wednesday by the New York City Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, which was established in May, noted that figure rose to a staggering 62 percent in the first quarter of this year, despite Jewish New Yorkers comprising just 11 percent of the city’s population.
After securing the election, Mamdani has repeatedly stressed a commitment to forcefully combatting antisemitism while in office. However, a recent report released by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) revealed that at least 20 percent of Mamdani’s transition and administrative appointees have either a “documented history of making anti-Israel statements” or ties to radical anti-Zionist organizations that “openly promote terror and harass Jewish people.”
Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist and avowed anti-Zionist, is an avid supporter of boycotting all Israeli-tied entities who has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career and 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.