Anne Frank’s diary has become one of the world’s most famous symbols of defiance and hope. But its astonishing story has been historically hard to dramatise: the Franks’ artful elusion of the Nazis meant they were confined to the attic where they were hiding for two years, connected to the outside world only by the brave Dutch citizens who would bring them news and food (and a little radio).
National Geographic has found a way around this in their new eight-part series, A Small Light, by focusing on Miep Gies, one of the people who played an integral role in hiding Anne and her family.
Gies, played brilliantly by Bel Powley, is a dynamic, confident, quirky and stubborn young woman, and is struggling to get a job. That is until businessman Otto Frank looks kindly upon her and hires her as his secretary. But as life becomes more difficult for Jewish residents, and the Nazis’ ever more humiliating and threatening decrees take hold, the Franks, along with their friends the Van Pels and Fritz Pfeffer, a local dentist, are forced into hiding with Gies’s help, and she becomes essential to their survival. The series follows her courageous activities over the course of the war, alongside her lovable husband Jan (played by a barely recognisable Joe Cole).
By following Gies, the series can give a much more comprehensive look at life in Amsterdam under the Nazis. While A Small Light paints a clear and nuanced picture of the Franks as a family – the dignified and burdened Otto (played superbly by Liev Schreiber), thoughtful and distant Edith (Amira Casar), studious Margot (Ashley Brooke) and gifted and fearless Anne (Billie Boullet) – it also weaves in stories about Dutch resistance activities, evacuations and bombings. It touches on the role of the Jewish council (who worked with the Nazi regime to facilitate the Jewish deportations), and shows some of the casual, and less casual, anti-Semitism espoused by some Dutch citizens, as well as the difficulties of navigating rationing, deportations, and other Jewish families’ attempts to escape.
The series could definitely be grittier – both aesthetically (everyone looks remarkably fresh throughout) and emotionally (some of the harder truths about life in the attic, and the brutality that Jewish citizens experienced, are either left out or only lightly touched on) – but it’s forgivable because it means the series will likely be watched by a wider audience. Plus, hats off to the design team for their faithful recreation of Forties Amsterdam, right down to the sense of fear: as Gies’ many daring activities (such as hiding other Jewish citizens at her house and going to the Nazi headquarters to try and buy back the Franks’ freedom) put her life in jeopardy, the terror is palpable.
Of course, we know the tragic denouement of the story. Yet A Small Light is devastating, without ever verging on mawkish – it feeds us the hope that the tenants of the attic will somehow survive, and moves from being funny to gripping, frightening to upsetting, and from breezy to thought-provoking with ease – a rollercoaster of emotions which feels as though it may reflect how it might have felt to live in Amsterdam at the time.
In the end, its story of bravery and perseverance is a hammer-wallop round the head. A Small Light’s horrendous conclusion leaves a lasting impression, as it does every time you are reminded of it: the residents of the annex were still in hiding when the Allies landed in Normandy, and the Franks were sent on the very last train from the Netherlands to Auschwitz on September 3, 1944. Anne died in February or March 1945 in Bergen-Belsen, likely from typhus, just over a month before the camp was liberated by the British. Margot had died a couple of days earlier. This however in no way diminishes Gies’ efforts – it’s a pleasure to watch this series about her astonishing bravery.
