Asteroid named after Rescuer of Anne Frank's Diary

On Sunday, an asteroid between the planets Mars and Jupiter has been named after Miep Gies, the woman who saved the diary of Anne Frank. The asteroid, discovered in 1972, orbits between Mars and Jupiter and has an estimated diameter of seven kilometers. From now on it will be known as Miep Gies. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) said it wanted to draw attention to the steadfast courage of the now 100-year-old last surviving helper of the Frank family who hid in a building behind a house in Amsterdam during World War II.

Gies, now aged 100, took care of the Franks - the teenaged Anne, her parents and sister - and other Jews who hid from the Nazis in the Netherlands. Anne kept the diary from 1942-1944, while living in a building at 263 Prinsengracht. After they were discovered and deported, it was Gies who found and hid Anne's diary.

Anne Frank died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, shortly before her sixteenth birthday and the end of the war. After the war, Gies gave the only surviving family member, Otto Frank his daughter's diary. The world famous diary of Anne Frank, which is now in Anne Frank museum, attracts nearly a million visitors as year from all over the world.

In a diary entry dated July 11, 1943, Anne wrote: "Miep is just like a pack mule, she fetches and carries so much. Almost every day she manages to get hold of some vegetables for us and brings everything in shopping bags on her bicycle."