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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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Students Form ‘Human Swastika’ at California High School, Post Image With Hitler Quote
Students forming “human swastika.” Photo: Screenshot.
Eight students at Branham High School in the city of San Jose came together last week to form what police described as a “human swastika” on the campus’ football field in another disturbing antisemitic incident at a California K-12 school.
The students captured the moment in a photograph and later posted it to social media, captioning it with a quote by Adolf Hitler.
Authorities in San Jose have launched a hate crime investigation into the incident, according to local media outlets.
School officials denounced the students’ actions.
“Our message to the community is clear: this was a disturbing and unacceptable act of antisemitism,” Branham High School principal Beth Silbergeld said in a statement. “Many in our community were rightly appalled by the image. Personally, I am horrified by this act. Professionally, I am confident that our school community can learn from this moment and emerge stronger and more united.”
According to the Bay Area Jewish Coalition (BAJC), which supports the local Jewish community,
“This incident did not occur in isolation,” BAJC spokesperson Tali Klima told The Algemeiner on Tuesday. “Over the past two years, we have seen a troubling pattern in which Jews are increasingly demonized and targeted. While the circumstances differ from those of Nazi Germany, the common thread is the deliberate spread of harmful narratives.”
Klima continued, “The fact that eight students felt emboldened to engage in this hateful behavior on campus (and then post publicly) reflects an educational environment that has allowed extremist political agendas which are blatantly antisemitic into our schools. The district and state must take decisive action to restore a climate of tolerance, respect, and inclusion for Jewish students and the broader community.”
California’s state government recently approved legislation for combating K-12 antisemitism which called for establishing a new Office for Civil Rights for monitoring antisemitism in public schools, appointing an Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator, setting parameters within which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be equitably discussed, and barring antisemitic materials from the classroom.
State lawmakers introduced the measure, also known as Assembly Bill (AB) 715, in the California legislature following a rise in antisemitic incidents, including vandalism and assault. The list of outrages includes a student group chanting “Kill the Jews” during an anti-Israel protest and partisan activists smuggling far-left, anti-Zionist content into classrooms without clearing the content with parents and other stakeholders.
Elsewhere in California, K-12 antisemitism has caused severe psychological trauma to Jewish students as young as eight years old and fostered a hostile learning environment, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.
In Berkeley United School District (BUSD), teachers have allegedly used their classrooms to promote antisemitic stereotypes about Israel, weaponizing disciplines such as art and history to convince unsuspecting minors that Israel is a “settler-colonial” apartheid state committing a genocide of Palestinians. While this took place, high level BUSD officials allegedly ignored complaints about discrimination and tacitly approved hateful conduct even as it spread throughout the student body.
At Berkeley High School (BUSD), for example, a history teacher forced students to explain why Israel is an apartheid state and screened an anti-Zionist documentary, according to a lawsuit filed last year by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The teacher allegedly squelched dissent, telling a Jewish student who raised concerns about the content of her lessons that only anti-Zionist narratives matter in her classroom and that any other which argues that Israel isn’t an apartheid state is “laughable.” Elsewhere in the school, an art teacher, whose name is redacted from the complaint for matters of privacy, displayed anti-Israel artworks in his classroom, one of which showed a fist punching through a Star of David.
In September 2023, some of America’s most prominent Jewish and civil rights groups sued the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in California for concealing from the public its adoption of ethnic studies curricula containing antisemitic and anti-Zionist themes. Then in February, the school district paused implementation of the program to settle the lawsuit.
One month later, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, StandWithUs, and the ADL filed a civil rights complaint accusing the Etiwanda School District in San Bernardino County, California, of doing nothing after a 12-year-old Jewish girl was assaulted, having been beaten with stick, on school grounds and teased with jokes about Hitler.
Antisemitism in K-12 schools has increased every year of this decade, according to data compiled by the ADL. In 2023, antisemitic incidents in US public schools increased 135 percent, a figure which included a rise in vandalism and assault.
California is not alone in dealing with the issue. Pennsylvania has a significant K-12 antisemitism problem as well, a fact acknowledged recently by a surrogate of the administration of Gov. Josh Shapiro following Congress announcing an investigation into antisemitism in the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) and a disturbing anti-Israel statement at a high school in the Wissahickon School District.
“Governor Shapiro takes a back seat to no one on these issues, and as he has repeatedly spoken out about antisemitism, and this kind of hateful rhetoric is unacceptable and has no place in Pennsylvania — especially not in our classrooms,” Rosie Lapowsky, a spokesperson for Shapiro, said in a statement first shared with Fox News Digital. “This is a matter the governor has made clear the district needs to take very seriously.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Jewish Groups Slam Basque Government for Honoring Anti-Israel UN Rapporteur Francesca Albanese
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
Jewish communities in Spain and France have condemned the Basque government’s decision to award UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese a human rights honor, citing her long record of making antisemitic remarks, promoting anti-Jewish hatred, and seemingly legitimizing Hamas’s terrorist attacks on the Jewish state.
Last week, the government of the Basque Region in northern Spain announced that Albanese will receive the 2025 René Cassin Human Rights Award, named after French Jewish human rights and Zionist activist René Cassin – author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“Through her work at the United Nations, Francesca Albanese has played a key role in exposing human rights violations, challenging impunity, and advocating for the effective enforcement of international norms that protect people in conflict and occupied territories,” the announcement read.
Albanese’s work “is marked by legal rigor, independent judgment, and a strong ethical commitment that should guide all those working to uphold human rights on the international stage,” it continued.
In a joint statement on Monday, the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain (FCJE) and the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) denounced the decision, arguing it undermines the principles that Cassin stood for.
“René Cassin, author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and fervent defender of justice, held an unwavering commitment to peace, human dignity, and the right of the Jewish people to live in security,” the statement read.
“Awarding this prize to Ms. Albanese constitutes a distortion of Cassin’s legacy and a serious misunderstanding of the values of human rights,” it continued.
Communiqué conjoint – La Fédération des Communautés Juives d’Espagne @fcjecom et le Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (Crif) expriment leur profond désaccord avec l’attribution, par le Gouvernement basque, du Prix René Cassin 2025 des droits de l’Homme à…
— CRIF (@Le_CRIF) December 5, 2025
Albanese is set to receive the award at a ceremony on Wednesday in Bilbao, a city in northern Spain.
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) also condemned the Spanish government’s decision, voicing support for the Jewish communities in Spain and France and calling the move “deeply troubling.”
“Albanese has repeatedly advanced narratives that minimize or excuse violence against Jews and has a documented record of antisemitic rhetoric,” WJC posted on X.
The Basque Government’s decision to award the 2025 René Cassin Human Rights Prize to Francesca Albanese is deeply troubling. Albanese has repeatedly advanced narratives that minimize or excuse violence against Jews and has a documented record of antisemitic rhetoric.
We support… https://t.co/ZT5QfOgzpa
— World Jewish Congress (@WorldJewishCong) December 5, 2025
Despite objections from several governments including France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and the Netherlands, as well as numerous NGOs, Albanese was reappointed earlier this year for a three-year term amid concerns about her controversial remarks and alleged pro-Hamas stance.
Since taking on the role of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories in 2022, Albanese has been at the center of controversy due to what critics, including US and European lawmakers, have described as antisemitic and anti-Israel public remarks.
In the months following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israeli communities, Albanese accused Israel of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people have been killed in Gaza as a result of Israeli actions.
She has also previously made comments about a “Jewish lobby” controlling America and Europe, compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and stated that Hamas’s violence against Israelis — including rape, murder, and kidnapping — needs to be “put in context.”
Last year, the UN launched a probe into Albanese for allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations.
In the past, she has also celebrated the anti-Israel protesters rampaging across US college campuses, saying they represent a “revolution” and give her “hope.”
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Helen Nash, kosher cookbook author and NYC philanthropist, dies at 89
(JTA) — Helen Nash, a New-York based kosher cookbook author and philanthropist who pioneered modern kosher cooking starting in the 1980s, died on Dec. 8 at the age of 89.
Her first cookbook “Kosher Cuisine,” was published in 1984 by Random House, and adapted a variety of international recipes for kosher cooks. Its publication, Nash told the Detroit Jewish News at the time, sought to prove that kosher cooking “could be as varied, elegant and exciting as one wished to make it.”
She went on to demonstrate that in two more cookbooks, demonstrating what one reviewer called “her ability to expand the kosher palate.”
“Keeping kosher is more, to me, than just a sensible way to live and to eat healthfully. The ancient Jewish dietary laws help to organize my life around family, Friday nights, and holidays,” wrote Nash in her 2012 book, “Helen Nash’s New Kosher Cuisine: Healthy, Simple, and Stylish.”
Nash was born Helen Englander in Krakow, Poland, on Dec. 24, 1935 where her family owned a textile business. With her parents and sister, Nash survived World War II with her family after they were deported to Siberia.
“There was no cooking in my childhood,” Nash told the Jewish Book Council in 2012. “When I was four and a half, my family was transported out of Krakow, and we spent the war in labor camps in Siberia. Food was nonexistent — no fruit, no vegetables. It was a ration diet of subsistence level.”
Following the war, Nash’s family reunited with her maternal grandparents in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, before settling in Crown Heights.
In 1957, she met and married her husband, Jack Nash, who was also a refugee from Berlin. Having grown up in an Orthodox family, Nash insisted that she keep a kosher kitchen.
“It was my interest,” Nash told New York Jewish Week in 2015. “Most women didn’t have careers outside the home, and I sort of carved a niche for myself, and the niche was entertaining in a certain style. Jack was very encouraging. And I met so many people I wouldn’t have met if I’d stayed in the religious mode.”
While her husband, who died in 2008, went on to serve as the chairman of the Oppenheimer & Company mutual fund business and founded the revival of The New York Sun, Nash charted her own path in the kitchen.
Following the birth of her children, Joshua and Pamela, Nash took classes with famed chefs including Michael Field and Millie Chan and worked on how to adapt their cuisines to a kosher palate.
Her second cookbook, “Helen Nash’s Kosher Kitchen,” published in 1988, also sought to break boundaries in kosher recipes. “’Kosher food is more than chopped liver and gefilte fish,” said Nash at the time.
“Helen Nash’s New Kosher Cuisine,” published following the death of her husband, also took kosher cooking to new heights, incorporating new global ingredients that had been made kosher since the publication of her earlier books.
Nash also chaired the Nash Family Foundation, which supported numerous Jewish organizations in New York City. She and her husband were also contributors to UJA-Federation of New York, Mount Sinai Medical Center, the Israel Museum, Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Yeshiva University.
Rabbi Menachem Creditor, a scholar in residence and rabbi for the UJA-Federation of New York, dedicated his Torah study on Youtube Wednesday to Nash.
“Helen Nash was many things, including a renowned author of recipe books and chef, she was a matriarch in her family,” said Creditor. “Her family foundation has changed the Jewish world for the better in countless ways, and I was blessed, privileged since the first moment I began at UJA almost eight years ago to learn Torah with Helen every single Wednesday for these last eight years.”
Nash is survived by her children and grandchildren. A funeral service for her was held on Dec. 9 at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, an Orthodox synagogue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
The post Helen Nash, kosher cookbook author and NYC philanthropist, dies at 89 appeared first on The Forward.