"But even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room."
— Miep Gies
A Small Light is a National Geographic Channel biographical/histocial drama miniseries created by Joan Rater and Tony Phelan that was released in May 2023.
It details the story of Miep and Jan Gies, a Dutch couple that helped the Jewish Frank (including, of course, Anne) and van Pels families hide from the Nazis during World War II in occupied Amsterdam.
The show stars Bel Powley as Miep Gies, Joe Cole as Jan Gies, Liev Schreiber as Otto Frank, Billie Boullet as Anne Frank and Ian McElhinney as Johannes Kleiman.
It can be watched on Disney+.
This show provides examples of:
- America Won World War II: Averted. During the occupation, references were made to the Allies in general and their progress. The Northern part of the Netherlands was freed mostly by Canadians.
- Bilingual Bonus: German is spoken in the series. English stands in for Dutch, so despite it being set in the Netherlands, Dutch is not spoken, and all written materials are in English.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Netherlands is freed and Miep survives the war, along with her husband and her fellow employees. Otto Frank comes back from the concentration camps, but his entire family and all the other people that had been hiding at the Annex are gone. Anne's diary is a beacon of hope for humanity after it is published.
- Closet Gay: Cas, Miep's adoptive brother. While homosexuality in pre-Nazi Amsterdam
wasn't quite as openly embraced as nowadays, homosexuality had been legal for more than a century by the start of the war. Cas needing to be in the closet becomes more important when the Nazis take over. - Comically Small Bribe: One of the Dutch Nazis searching Opekta mocks Miep for trying to bribe him with a cookie. He eats the cookie too.
- Friendly Enemy: One Nazi saves two children that were about to put on transport and brings them to Miep and Jan secretly in the evening.
- Miep is not arrested with everyone else when she notices that the Nazi commanding officer searching Opekta has a Viennese accent when speaking German, and points out that they're both from Vienna. She was trying to use it as a way of somehow getting him to let the residents of the Secret Annex go, but instead he only leaves her behind.
- Les Collaborateurs: The Dutch NSB are a major source of danger for the main characters in the series, as they were in real life.
- Females Are More Innocent: When the Annex is discovered and the inhabitants are taken away, the older male employees insist Miep will play to this trope to save herself. Instead, she makes use of the leader being from Vienna to gain a human connection with him. He does indeed let her go, amidst some threats.
- Foregone Conclusion: Despite the efforts Miep and Jan and their friends go to protect the residents of the annex, they will end up being caught, and only one, Otto Frank, will survive the Holocaust.
- Foreign Cuss Word: A stressful moment has Otto Frank yelling out Scheiße, which is German for shit.
- Good All Along: two of Jan's supervisors respond suspiciously to his attempts to bend the rules to help those put in danger by the Nazi occupation, leading Jan to worry that they will fire or report him. Turns out that they're both members of the Resistance who want to recruit him
- Good-Guy Bar: There is a gay bar in the show where many of the Resistance members meet and plan (modeled on the real-life Cafe 't Mange, which was indeed a weapons depot for the Resistance during the Dutch occupation).
- Heroic BSoD: Miep sits at her desk in a semi-comatose state for the rest of the day after the Nazis leave Opekta after arresting everyone else.
- Historical Domain Character: in addition to the residents of the Secret Annex, Miep, Jan, and the other Opekta employees who hid the Annex residents, we have real life resistance members Willem Arondeus, Frieda Belifante, and Bet Van Beeren as members of the Resistance group Jan joins.
- Hope Spot:
- Towards the end of the episode Boiling Point, the residents of the annex and their friends hear about D-Day and become hopeful that they will be liberated soon. The episode ends with the Gestapo beginning the raid of the annex.
- The final episode has everyone hopeful that Anne, Margot and Peter survived the camps when Otto returns. As the Foregone Conclusion entry states, only Otto survives.
- Hypocrite: an agent of the Occupation government contemptuously refers to Miep and Jan claiming that all of the furniture in their apartment is theirs (as opposed to their Jewish former landlady's) as "theft"...while he is going through the apartment to seize any Jewish property of interest to the authorities
- Intergenerational Friendship: Miep Gies and Otto Frank. Later he becomes close with her husband Jan as well.
- It Works Better with Bullets: The gun the Resistance gives Jan to assassinate the Nazi officer wasn't even loaded, a fact that the inexperienced Jan doesn't notice. This was done on purpose, since the point of the mission was a test to see if Jan could really kill.
- Jumped at the Call: When Otto Frank takes Miep into his confidence about his plans to hide, he tells her to think it through and then decide if she wants to be involved with helping them. Miep says that is not necessary. She will help.
- Her husband Jan is, over the course of trying to help Miep out by getting her extra ration books, approached by the Resistance and asked to join. He also quickly accepts
- La Résistance: The Dutch Resistance is a major force in the show, and Jan Gies later joins up with them.
- Nazi Gold: Miep realizes how dirty her friend's boyfriend is when she receives a necklace from her that turns out to have been stolen from Jewish people.
- Not Blood Siblings: Miep's adoptive parents bring this point up when they suggest her marry Cas. Neither Miep nor Cas support this idea, especially since Cas is a closeted homosexual.
- Odd Friendship: Otto Frank is a successful middle-aged business man with a family who fled Nazi Germany. Miep is his young, cheeky employee who doesn't have the right credentials to do the job right. She is the one he turns to for help when the Nazis invade the Netherlands and after the occupation, he lives with her and her husband for seven years.
- One-Steve Limit: Played straight for once. Two of the people who hid the Secret Annex had the same first name (Johannes Kleiman and Johannes Voskuijil), but Voskuijil does not appear in the show, and his major roles in making sure that the Annex wasn't found are either unmentioned (monitoring that the factory workers at Opekta were unaware of the Annex's existence) or not ascribed to anyone in particular (building the bookcase that hid the door to the Annex).
- Power of Trust: Otto Frank completely trusts Miep and she shows she is worthy of it throughout the war.
- Jan's colleague and employer also realize they can trust him when they notice he is sneakily helping people and get him involved into the resistance.
- Real-Person Epilogue: The series ends detailing what becomes of the major characters after the events of the show.
- Refuge in Audacity: Jan manages to smuggle three Jews out of Amsterdam by getting them arrested by a police officer who's secretly a Resistance sympathizer
- The scene where this happens is intercut with one where Miep is knocked down by Nazis on a motorcycle, and, overcome by the pressure and frustration of the past few days, she cracks and throws an apple at them. The Nazis are so surprised that they just laugh and speed off, completely missing the illegal radio that Miep had been hiding in her bag that she was standing right next to.
- In the next episode, Miep slaps Tonny Ahlers (a Smug Snake Dutch Nazi who had been blackmailing Otto Frank before he went into hiding) in the face and screams at him to ask if he was the one to tip off the Nazis. Ahlers can only respond with confused terror.
- Secret Diary: Anne Frank's diary is easily the most famous diary in history. Miep saves it before the Nazis can take it away and later hands it back to Otto Frank, who has it published.
- Secret Test of Character: The Resistance sends Jan to assassinate a high-ranking Nazi officer in his hotel room to see if he has the ability to kill for the cause. It ends up being a set up where the officer is actually a member of the Resistance, and the entire mission was just a test for Jan.
- Smug Snake: Tonny Ahlers is an odious Dutch Nazi who before Otto had gone into hiding, had been blackmailing him for an anti-Nazi statement he had made in public, who keeps showing up at Opekta to try to force Miep to tell him where Otto is so he can keep blackmailing him. Notably, after Otto and the rest get arrested, Miep happens upon Ahlers and slaps him across the face, screaming at him to ask if he was the one to tip off the Nazis, and Ahlers can only respond with confused terror that he doesn't know what she's talking about.
- Title Drop: The series ends with a quote Miep would often end her speeches with.Miep Gies: But even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room.
- Translation Convention: Dutch is portrayed as English in the show. Both written and spoken.
- Undying Loyalty: Miep Gies to her employer and friend Otto Frank and his family. Even when they are captured by the Gestapo, she still tries to bribe them to free them at great personal risk.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Willem Arondeus' first task for Jan to prove himself in the Resistance is to use his status as a social worker to retrieve a packet of important papers from the apartment of a Jewish family who had already been detained. Except it turns out that the "package" is actually a baby hidden in a drawer. Jan calls Arondeus out for not telling him what the mission actually was when he gets back.
