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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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Here Are Some Positive Local Developments in Support of Israel You Haven’t Heard About
Tennessee State Capitol Building in Nashville. Photo: Andre Porter/Wikimedia Commons.
On April 27, 2026, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) signed legislation requiring state agencies to use the geographic name “Judea and Samaria” instead of “West Bank” in official state materials. Known as the “Recognizing Judea and Samaria Act,” the law asserts that these terms are historically and Biblically accurate.
Just the week before, the members of the Arizona House passed a nonbinding resolution saying the same thing, after the Arizona Senate approved the legislation in February.
These pro-Israel bills earned little press in the Jewish community and even less in the general media outside of Tennessee and Arizona. Americans of all faiths who support Israel should applaud the lawmakers in both Arizona and Tennessee for their leadership and commitment to historical truth. At a time of increasing misinformation and the targeting of Israel, this bill sends a clear message about the significance of recognizing the Jewish people’s deep ties — dating back to Biblical times — to the Land of Israel.
The city of Hebron is in Judea and is the ancient resting place of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah. There are so many other links and ties proving the deep and continuous Jewish presence in the land, and these bills acknowledge that.
What’s more, this is a defeat for anti-Israel radicals in Tennessee who fought against the bill. The New York Times reported about those efforts: “The day of lobbying this month in the State Capitol in Nashville, coordinated by the American Muslim Advisory Council, attracted more than 100 Muslim students and community leaders.”
One year ago, Arkansas state legislators passed their “Recognizing Judea and Samaria Act,” following a 2023 Arkansas General Assembly resolution urging the use of the term “Judea and Samaria” instead of “the West Bank” in official state language.
While it can be argued that Arkansas, Tennessee, and Arizona are right leaning states, they often have Democratic or moderate trends and representatives. For example, from December 2020 through the beginning of 2023 neither of Arizona’s two senators were Republican. While Arizona Republicans control the state legislature, the margin is far from wide with just a handful of seats separating the parties.
Given the unprecedented levels of anti-Israel activity in both parties and the fact that anti-Zionists radicals are winning the anti-Israel legislation fight in far too many parts of the country, the question of how these seemingly symbolic wins matter is a legitimate one to ask.
Tip O’Neill, the Speaker of the House from 1977 to 1987, is remembered for coining the saying that “all politics is local.” From Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama, how many politicians serve early in their careers in their state legislatures? What’s more, these efforts force anti-Israel activists to play defense and occupy their time with things other than BDS, as was the case in Tennessee.
These are the kinds of innovative, accessible, and positive initiatives that the pro-Israel community should pursue much more frequently. Our confidence has been shaken by the harsh criticism of Israel from far too many on Capitol Hill, and these local efforts have been missing from our playbook for much longer than may have been reasonable. If only a handful more states enact such legislation, it will still be well worth it. Correcting false narratives and fighting for a cause you believe in is always worth it.
Moshe Phillips is national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel, AFSI, (www.AFSI.org), a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.
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How the Media Erases the Voices of Millions of Iranians
Cars burn in a street during an anti-regime protest in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 8, 2026. Photo: Stringer/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
A recent CNN article by Iranian freelance photojournalist Maryam Rahmanian, in collaboration with Kyle Almond and Brett Roegiers, purports to feature pictures and interviews of “everyday Iranians” amidst the war.
In “‘Nothing feels normal anymore’: How everyday Iranians are coping with war,” CNN claims to depict the average Iranian, but it should raise eyebrows. Whether a result of biased or gullible journalism, the CNN article fails to accurately inform its audience.
While there are no reliable surveys, there is clearly a significant portion of Iranian society that supports the war out of desperation, hoping for regime change.
Just four months ago, the Islamic Republic responded to mass protests with extreme violence, killing up to 36,500 protesters.
More were executed in the aftermath despite President Donald Trump’s clear red line warning the regime against killing protesters. Many Iranians posted videos of themselves asking President Donald Trump to militarily intervene.
In the early days of the war, many Iranians also posted videos of themselves thanking President Donald Trump and dancing in public. Then came the mass celebrations that erupted on Iranian streets following the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei by Israeli forces.
Anti-regime sentiments have been noted elsewhere in the media, too. Left-wing, diaspora Iranian journalist Arash Azizi wrote for The Atlantic that he was surprised that even Iranian socialist activists, typically biased against war and especially against the United States, were sympathetic and supportive of a military intervention.
NPR interviewed Iranians who had fled the war to Iraq and Turkey and reported that “most people told us they supported the strikes.”
After two months of war, Iranian attitudes have undoubtedly shifted, but in which direction we cannot know, given the regime-enforced Internet blackout in Iran. But anecdotal evidence — including my own conversations with those in Iran — suggests that a large portion of the population continues to hope that the hostilities resume until the regime falls.
Euronews’ Persian service recently published interviews of Iranians showing a divide between those who want the war to resume to bring down the Islamic Republic and those who oppose it, including those who have changed their minds since the war began.
Honest journalism would have reflected the diversity of views. But Rahmanian’s report instead falsely depicted Iranian views as monolithic against US and Israeli strikes.
Her first subject told her, “When I stepped outside, the atmosphere felt very different,” adding, “The streets were extremely crowded. Mothers were crying. A route that usually takes me 40 minutes took nearly three hours.”
A second subject said, “Fear quickly settled in. I live next to a mosque, and that made everything more frightening. I kept thinking it might become a target.”
These are common reactions to war, and that is precisely the problem. Iran is not a normal society at war. When it comes to Iran, anti-war and patriotic sentiments common among war-torn nations tell only a partial story when another significant portion of society invited foreign militaries to liberate them.
The context of the previous conflict is informative. The Twelve-Day War created a perception that military action would be light, and many Iranians assumed this war would look the same. They were wrong, but that group of people did not have a representation hearing in the CNN article.
One comment stood out. A 35-year-old woman, Salemeh, told Rahmanian, “I jump at every noise, wondering if something has been hit again,” adding, “There is construction near our house, and even those constant sounds make me anxious.” This recalled a conversation I had with a woman in her 60s from Tehran two weeks before the war, who told me the same thing almost word for word.
“There is construction by our apartment,” she told me, “At every loud sound, everybody jumps, asking, ‘Did [America] finally hit?’”
There is a key difference: The woman I talked to was excited about the prospect of war, hoping that it would take down the Islamic Republic. She told me, “I heard a very loud noise one day while in the shower.” She went on, “Convinced that the war had started, I excitedly jumped out to celebrate, naked, only to be disappointed.”
Another woman I interviewed weeks into the war, with the pseudonym Golnaz, whose home had been destroyed in a strike, told me that the destruction had made her even more supportive of the war. She explained that, because the price the nation had paid was so high, she did not want the war to stop before the regime fell, for the destruction to have been all for nothing.
She told me, “Do not let the war stop until they surrender.”
None of Rahmanian’s subjects said that they had previously supported the war, but several were against it in the outset. One woman, Akram, 63, told her, “I believe Israel and the United States have manipulated the situation, and I am proud that we have stood against a superpower and defended ourselves. For me, it is an honor to stand firm and say we resisted.”
While opposition to Israel persists among the older generations of Iranians (but not among the youth), anti-Americanism has been out of the mainstream for decades. The average Iranian does not view the “resistance” favorably. A plurality blamed only the regime for the Twelve-Day War, with 69 percent saying that “the Islamic Republic should stop calling for the destruction of Israel.” In other words, while CNN and Rahmanian claim that they were representing the everyday Iranian, they had to reach for the fringe.
The network also failed to provide readers with important context, shaping the credibility of the sentiments expressed. The Islamic Republic has been persecuting, even executing, those who have supported the war. For Iranians to publicly support the US and Israeli strikes is to put their lives on the line. Rahmanian, Almond, and Roegiers did not disclose this important context. The authors also failed to mention the January protests, during which many more Iranians were killed over four days than during 39 days of bombardment.
The largest news organization in the world should know better. There are a plethora of images and social media posts that confirm that a large number of Iranians have supported the war throughout. Many have even recorded themselves on rooftops cheering for the American and Israeli F-35s flying over their heads.
CNN should also know, and have reported on, the threat Iranians face for speaking out against the regime. It is also obvious that no journalist in Iran would be safe reporting on these matters for an American outlet, an act the regime equates with treason. By selling this one-sided story as the mainstream view in Iran, CNN erased the millions of desperate Iranians suffering under the thumb of the Islamic Republic’s oppression.
Shay Khatiri is an immigrant from Iran and a media researcher at CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, where this article also appeared.
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It Doesn’t Begin With Bricks; How to Stand Up to Jew-Hatred Today
A man walks through the grounds of the former Nazi German Auschwitz death camp for the annual International “March of the Living” in Oswiecim, Poland, April 18, 2023. Jakub Porzycki/Agencja Wyborcza.pl via REUTERS
My friend Abe Foxman who headed the ADL for many years and who passed away this week, used to say that the Holocaust didn’t begin with the bricks manufacturing the Concentration camps — it began with words and hate speech.
Words transformed Jews into something less than human beings, which allowed Nazis and their allies to dehumanize Jews. By dehumanizing Jews, it became possible — and much easier — to mass murder millions of them.
That same process is happening right now, all over the world.
This week, I attended the 90th anniversary of the founding of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in Geneva. Representatives from almost 100 countries, as well as government representatives whose job is to fight antisemitism, were there. Each had a story to tell — a story of a world we never thought we would have to face again. It was two full days of stories.
But stories were not the main focus of the conference. Efforts to combat hate and antisemitism all over the world were on full display. In fact, 32 Special Envoys and Coordinators Combating Antisemitism from more than two dozen countries and international organizations issued a unified declaration from Geneva reaffirming a shared commitment to protect Jewish life and confront antisemitism in all its forms.
The joint statement — signed by representatives from the United States, European nations, Israel, Australia, Canada, the Organization of American States, OSCE, European Commission, and others — warns that antisemitism is no longer a marginal phenomenon, but an escalating global threat targeting Jewish communities, democratic values, and the foundations of free societies.
The signatories called for strengthened security for Jewish communities, prosecution of antisemitic offenders, expanded Holocaust education, and coordinated international action to combat the spread of antisemitic hatred online and offline.
Importantly, the statement demonstrates that despite political differences or differing national approaches, democratic nations remain united in the understanding that antisemitism cannot be tolerated — anywhere, at any time, or under any pretext.
Besides the Jewish leaders and the government representatives, three representatives stood out. The WJC gave a special Resilience Award to the parents of Ran Gvili, the police commander who was killed on October 7 and whose body was the last Gaza victim returned to Israel.
Second, Ambassador Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism from the US Department of State, was front and center, telling the crowd that this US administration is taking the lead in combating antisemitism worldwide.
Third, Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Axel Springer SE, delivered a sweeping and uncompromising address before the World Jewish Congress Governing Board on Monday, declaring that antisemitism has become a global ideological movement threatening not only Jewish communities, but the future of Western civilization itself.
Speaking in front of the senior Jewish communal leaders, diplomats, and government officials, Döpfner condemned the worldwide surge in anti-Jewish hatred following the October 7 Hamas terror attacks, and delivered a forceful defense of Zionism, democratic values, and Israel’s right to defend itself.
“Right after the images of the victims were seen, the downplaying began. Right after the names of the murdered were known, the justifications began,” Döpfner declared.
Arguing that anti-Zionism has become the modern vehicle for antisemitism, Döpfner stated, “It is not Zionism that is racism. Rather, anti-Zionism is racism.”
“What does not make sense to me is this: Why should Zionism be an idea and a goal that only Jews can embrace?” he continued. “I am a Zionist.”
Declaring support for Israel inseparable from the defense of democracy and Enlightenment values, Döpfner defended, “A people’s right to live in safety. The right to defend oneself. The right not to be dependent on the mercy of others again. Anyone who questions these rights is not only questioning Israel — but the principles upon which free societies are founded.”
Throughout the address, Döpfner warned that antisemitism has entered what he described as a dangerous new phase fueled by ideological radicalization, elite institutional failure, and social media amplification.
“Antisemitism is no longer a dark shadow from Austria and Germany,” Döpfner said. “Since then, it has become a global export hit.”
Warning specifically about the rise of extremist ideologies within parts of Western political and cultural movements, Döpfner declared: “We must expose ‘woke’ ideology as a Trojan horse for antisemitism and Islamism.”
Calling for “new thinking and most importantly, new actions,” Döpfner outlined a five-point plan to confront the crisis, including a “zero-tolerance policy toward open hatred of Jews,” stronger action against antisemitic incitement online, expanded Holocaust education, and greater support for Jewish life in Europe.
Döpfner concluded the address with a call for solidarity with Israel and the Jewish people: “We shall all be Zionists!”
Döpfner stands in stark contrast to most of the press around the world. We should applaud him for his words and actions, and hope they are finally replicated elsewhere.
J. Philip Rosen is currently Chairman of the American Section of the World Jewish Congress and Board Member of Yeshiva University, as well as several other Jewish causes. He was Vice-Chair of Birthright Israel for many years.