Uncategorized
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.”
—
The post Disney+ series ‘A Small Light’ tells the Anne Frank story from the perspective of the woman who hid her appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
The Gospel of Grievance — From Father Coughlin to Tucker Carlson
Tucker Carlson speaks at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, Oct. 21, 2025. Photo: Gage Skidmore/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
There is a new digital gospel sweeping the American landscape. It preaches grievance, faith, and freedom in equal measures. Its apostles include the likes of Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, and a proliferating class of imitators.
Freed from the guardrails of editors and regulators, they feed off of mob fury and algorithmic applause. They use their pulpits to preach of national decay, all while wrapping themselves in the vestments of Christian renewal.
They all claim to be “just asking questions,” but by some perverse irony, the answer is always the same. Behind every corruption, every lost ideal, and every “establishment,” they inevitably will find the familiar silhouette of the Jew.
They have updated the tropes with terms like globalists, neo-cons, and Christian Zionists, but the pogrom-era rhetoric remains familiar. This is not theological antisemitism; this is a 21st-century cultural version, an aesthetic antisemitism of mood, meme, and insinuation. Utilizing borrowed piety, they baptize resentment and harvest rage and indignation.
This is their crusade, and they have corrupted a religious thematic to lend them divine coverage. “The truth shall set you free,” is their battle cry, and “Christ is King” has become their slogan of defiance, not devotion.
As my grandmother was fond of saying, “there is nothing new under the sun.” This is not a new gospel, only a recycled heresy. We have a recent and more successful American epoch to which we can look to for perspective. In fact, Tucker and his minions merely plagiarized the playbook of an American Catholic priest just over a century ago known as Father Coughlin.
Charles Coughlin began in Detroit as a preacher of hope — and ended up as one of the most prolific disseminators of antisemitism in American history. Armed with his frock and a national radio program, Coughlin delivered his own racist brand of Christian virtue that was populism with a halo.
He broadcast his divinely inspired grievances, to an audience estimated at its height of up to 40 million people, or roughly one-third of the American population. His diatribes were consistent in that they all revolved around a theme of Jewish conspiracy.
In his telling, Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal, Wall Street, unions, the press, were all controlled and manipulated by the Jews.
When he launched his radio show, it was moralistic but not sanctimonious; he was charismatic, warm, and conversational.
Everything changed with the Great Depression — when he transitioned from theological to economic populism, less priest, and more crusader. As his popularity soared, his myopic focus on the Jewish population increased accordingly.
As a man who saw things in cosmic good and evil, God versus corruption, he became a demagogue railing against the banks and the “money changers.”
He was vocally defending Hitler, supporting fascism, and reprinting the “Elders of Zion” and other Nazi propaganda. This activity was accompanied by his incessant attacks on the ubiquitous Jew that he saw in every shadow of every corner.
Rabbi Jonathan Sachs once said, “More than hate destroys the hated, it destroys the hater.” In the case of Father Coughlin, his malady had taken him past the point of no return, and his passion had graduated from engaging to psychosis.
The Vatican decided Coughlin was a liability and pulled the plug by instructing him to cease broadcasting. Roosevelt’s government and the FCC decided that the good father had crossed the Rubicon and had no choice but to take him down. He was unceremoniously deprived of mail and radio privileges.
Father Coughlin went back to quiet pastoring for another few decades, and passed away in ignominy in 1979.
Today’s pretenders to Coughlin’s throne are less talented, but they are equally venomous and divisive. We can no longer rely on the church and government to stymie the efforts of those who wish to divide us.
Anyone with a Wi-Fi connection can mine the depths of human debasement and moral despair. Radio towers are no longer the barrier to entry, all that is required today is a grievance and a trending podcast.
In a way, this makes the likes of Carlson, Owens, and Fuentes more dangerous — because no one will be coming to stop them. It will be solely up to the American people to accept or reject what they are selling.
Coughlin’s America had the courage to silence him, but ours has provided a microphone and an audience. America today rightfully does not believe in guardrails and resists cancel culture, but at the same time it mistakes amplification for truth. Racism thrives when institutions abdicate, when grievances are monetized faster than they can be moderated, and when complexity is traded for conspiracy.
Philip Gross is a business executive and writer based in London. Born in New York, he writes on Jewish history, identity, and public affairs.
Uncategorized
What Would Happen if America Turned Against Israel — and US Jews?
An Israeli flag and an American flag fly at Abu Dhabi International Airport before the arrival of Israeli and US officials, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Aug. 31, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Christoper Pike
The United States is arguably Israel’s greatest friend and ally. But what if it wasn’t anymore? What would American Jews and Israel have to do then?
With the recent election of Zohran Mamdani as the next mayor of New York City, which is home to more Jews than anywhere else in the US, the rise to power of anti-Israel politicians is now more apparent than ever. Indeed, as anti-Israel and antisemitic politics in both the Democratic and Republican parties becomes increasingly popular, it may only be a matter of time before enemies of the Jewish State dominate both houses of Congress, and even the US presidency. If that happens, Israel, its supporters, and all Jewish Americans need to be ready.
How would an anti-Israel US behave? Firstly, it would not support Israel in international forums, like the UN Security Council. As a result, Israel would face severe diplomatic isolation, unlike anything it has ever seen — even worse than the isolation Israel faces now. Indeed, Israel could end up becoming a pariah state like North Korea.
If the US ceases to be its ally, Israel would also likely face severe economic consequences. Currently, the US is Israel’s largest trading partner. Trade between the two countries is valued at $35 to $40 billion a year. Imagine if the US severely cut trade ties with Israel or even stopped trading with Israel entirely. The Israeli economy would be in danger.
Things wouldn’t be better for American Jews or other Americans who support Israel either. In fact, the kind of hostility Jews and supporters of Israel face in the US now might pale in comparison to the hostility they would face if the US was no longer a friend of the Jewish State. Eventually, even state-sponsored antisemitism could occur. In fact, many Jews around the world today will tell you they already feel as if it’s the 1930s all over again.
Both Israel and American Jews should immediately begin preparing for such a nightmarish scenario. There’s no time to waste.
For its part, Israel must be ready for a mass influx of immigration from the US. Absorbing immigrants, however, will probably be the least of Israel’s worries if the US is no longer its ally. The bigger problem will be reducing dependence on the US, especially in regards to military equipment and trade.
In Israel’s formative years, few countries were willing to sell arms to the Jewish State, so Israel had to be as self-sufficient as possible, and manufacture much of its own military equipment. Today, Israel has a thriving arms industry, one of the best in the world. Nevertheless, Israel is still too dependent on US military equipment. This has to change. Israel must undertake efforts to ensure that it can manufacture most if not all its own arms. Everything from ammunition to fighter aircraft. Because if the US ceases to be Israel’s ally, it will severely restrict its sale of arms to the Jewish State, if not stop altogether.
Furthermore, Israel must learn to survive without the US as a major trading partner. It must seek new trade partners and consolidate trade with current partners. Israel should do its utmost to ensure that it is as economically self-sufficient as possible in the event that the US decides to impose crippling sanctions or even a full-scale trade embargo.
Meanwhile, American Jews should prepare for the possibility that they might have to immigrate to Israel if being Jewish in the US becomes impossible and even threatens their lives. A good start would be learning Hebrew.
This is obviously a doomsday scenario, which will hopefully never come to pass. Nonetheless, we should all be prepared for the possibility that, in the future, the US may no longer be Israel’s ally — and might become hostile to all its Jewish citizens. Better to be safe than sorry.
Jason Shvili is a freelance writer and commentator on Jewish affairs, Israel, and the Middle East.
Uncategorized
Rabbi Moshe Hauer: In a World of Self-Promotion, He Chose Humility
Rabbi Moshe Hauer. Photo: Orthodox Union.
For four years, my boss and mentor, Rabbi Moshe Hauer, Executive Vice President of the Orthodox Union, and I, argued about how much self-promotion is needed for a leader to make a global impact.
As the leader of the Orthodox Union, representing the largest Jewish Orthodox organization in the world, I felt it was imperative that Rabbi Hauer spend more time talking publicly about the work of the organization.
I asked that he allow us to post more pictures of him in high-level meetings on social media, and that as a respected spiritual leader, he give people more access to his inner world in his writings. He fought me on each one.
And now, as we approach his shloshim on November 15, following his passing at age 60 on Shmini Atzeret, he has proven me wrong. Tributes streamed in from all over the world — from Presidents Trump and Biden to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, from faith leaders to communal leaders across all Jewish denominations.
I’ve been reminded that the Talmud teaches, “One who runs from honor, honor chases after him.”
Rabbi Hauer’s was not a natural shyness; it was a principled modesty. The book of Micah speaks of “walking modestly with your God.” It was a value that underscored all of Rabbi Hauer’s work.
There were initiatives that, for political reasons, he felt would be more impactful if they were not associated with the Orthodox Union. Without hesitation, he would greenlight the project and instruct those managing it to take no credit. Similarly, one colleague once quipped how a certain Jewish organization “beat the Orthodox Union to it,” by attaining a goal we were also working to achieve. Rabbi Hauer was incredulous: “Beat us?! We are all on the same team!”
Such levels of selflessness and integrity are rare in higher levels of leadership; corner offices are known for their outsized egos. This is perhaps why he made such an impact on the many political and faith leaders he met. Though he was soft-spoken, and though he never shied away from making it known when he disagreed with them, he was respected by all. In the words of Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, “Yes, we disagreed on so many issues but shared a profound respect and love for one another.”
Rabbi Hauer had a rich inner world. Watching him pray or study Torah, you could see the genuine emotions pouring forth. I begged him to write more often about his inner spiritual world, but he was allergic to charismatic faith leadership. As a rabbinic intern in the synagogue he led for 25 years, I saw how hard he worked to create leaders, not followers. Despite him rarely speaking about himself, thousands have described how much they grew from his spiritual teachings and model.
More recently, as his special assistant, I was witness to a unique dynamic between a boss and his employees. He was revered, and some may say feared, in the halls of the Orthodox Union, not because he reprimanded anyone, but because of his very high standards that motivated everyone around him to meet his expectations. Employees were often hesitant to argue with a decision made by Rabbi Hauer, their boss. They would ask me to be the go-between, and I would try to explain to them how wrong they were to avoid speaking with him directly.
Rabbi Hauer welcomed everyone into his office with a big smile. He took advice from anyone regardless of their title. If he was wrong, he would admit it — publicly and often. The Talmud states that God’s greatness is found in his humility. Rabbi Hauer was a Godly man.
I would assist him with his personal communications, which he was always catching up on. His inbox overflowed with messages; from wealthy donors, side by side with those from former congregants, from a world leader who wanted advice on a thorny topic and from a teenager who had a simple question about something he wrote. His schedule was grueling, and I begged him to ignore emails and just send a standard reply — a practice adopted by many people of his stature. He refused. He valued each and every person and wanted to make sure they knew it.
The most difficult part of my job was having to give him feedback. He was my teacher, and I had so much respect for him, making it hard to criticize him in any way. Whenever this happened, he would see me hesitating and begged me to speak my mind. Quite often he would ask me if he was missing something, if he was expecting too much from others or inserting himself too much into a situation. He was not asking from a place of low self-esteem, he was extremely confident. Rather, he recognized that in positions of power, one can too easily be blinded by that power, and so he worked tirelessly to maintain a healthy self-awareness.
Though some leadership books have recently started describing modesty and humility as valuable characteristics, it’s all too rare to see them put into practice.
In a world of social media influencers, and even faith-based social media influencers, self-promotion is seen by many as the only way to make an impact. But the thousands who gathered in Baltimore for Rabbi Hauer’s funeral, the thousands more who gathered in Jerusalem for his burial, the thousands visiting his home daily to pay their respects to the family, the countless tributes from faith leaders and politicians of all persuasions, and more important to Rabbi Hauer, the many simple regular people who felt touched by his greatness, are proof that genuine modesty and humility are exceptionally effective tools in making a real difference.
May his memory be for a blessing.
Rabbi Yisrael Motzen is the rabbi of Ner Tamid and the Special Assistant to the EVP at the Orthodox Union.