The series A Small Light has been on the Star Plus platform for a few months, but practically hidden and discreet like its story, if it weren’t for it being of gigantic importance. Many generations were impacted by Anne Frank’s Diary, one of the most human and important accounts of intolerance, fear, hope, and anguish, recorded in the first person of a girl of just 13 years old.

Anne was forced to live hidden in a confined space with her family and four other people to escape Nazism and her only relief was being able to write in her diary, which survived the War while its author did not. Anyone who has never read it, or seen the films, series, and plays adapting the story must resolve this immediately. Although she never dreamed of this invasion of privacy, the decision of her father, Otto, the only survivor of the eight people confined, to publish it after the end of the Second World War is heroic because, without filter, Anne tells us the fears and conflicts between innocent people persecuted and killed by Nazism. But A Small Light is another story, a parallel one, that has never been told before and is equally moving. It is the account of the people who helped the Franks and other persecuted people to hide, putting their own lives at risk. It is, in particular, the story of Miep Gies, a young woman who worked with Otto as a secretary and who, with her husband, Jan, was essential and humanitarian in the resistance.

The eight-episode series was created by Tony Phelan and Joan Rater and not only changes the focus of the story we know of Anne, and what the girl wrote in her diary but also reflects what the harsh times of war were like for those who did not join to Hitler’s norm. The Netflix series Anne Frank, My Best Friend, which tells the story of Hanneli Goslar, Anne’s best friend and possibly one of the last to have seen her alive is equally moving, but Miep’s recount of the facts is closer and longer.

Miep (Bel Powley) was also an immigrant to the Netherlands, having been born in Austria, and living with her adoptive family, who worries about the young girl because she seems to be aimless. They give the ultimatum of choosing between marriage or getting a job, and as the option to get married would be to join one of her adopted brothers, she tries to get a job at Opekta, a German spice company, managed by Otto Frank (Lieb Schreiber).

Although she eventually marries Jan (Joe Cole) in order to remain in Holland even after refusing to join the Nazi party, Miep clings to Otto, who becomes a father figure, as does her family, Edith ( Amira Casar), Margot (Ashley Brooke) and Anne (Billie Boullet). The pressure increases when the Nazis arrive in Holland and the Franks are unable to obtain a visa to go to the United States, forcing them to find another alternative. Otto asks Miep for help to hide them, which she accepts without hesitation, despite the risk.

The great idea of A Small Light, which used Miep’s biography as a basis, is to retell a well-known story from another perspective, one that shares the oppressive daily life of the War, the difficulties, the struggles, and the ‘ordinary’ people who tried to help. It’s moving that we see little of the Franks, we hear them muffled, in the background, which increases the heartache and claustrophobia of where they lived for more than two years (the place is now a Museum and one of the most impactful I’ve ever visited).

With great performances from the entire cast, I can only highly recommend watching the series. The unanswered questions, such as who betrayed the Franks, remain that way, which increases the pain of the story’s conclusion. It’s harrowing, even more so because Anne, her sister, her mother, and the others in hiding barely survived. They were discovered in August 1944, when the Allies were already advancing against the Nazis, and were sent on the last train to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp, on September 3, 1944. Two months later, the Franks were separated, when Anne and Margot Frank were sent to Bergen-Belsen, where within three months they died of spotted typhus, just a month before the camp was liberated by the British. Only Otto survived.

The series highlights what Miep Gies always insisted: she never saw herself as extraordinary but as a survivor herself. Born into a Catholic family in Vienna, she was sent to the Netherlands at a young age because her own family was unable to feed her. She was a foreigner, a witness to the hardships of her time, and a humanitarian.

The detail that A Small Light doesn’t miss, even subtly, is that we wouldn’t have Anne Frank’s diary if it weren’t for Miep’s initiative. Thinking about returning it to the author when she came back (Miep never gave up hope), the secretary kept it and never read what Anne said until many years after the book was published, something that in her own biography she says was providential. If she had read it, she would have burned the document because Anne spoke by the name of everyone who helped them, which at the time, would have been a death sentence. Even with an incredible story and dedication, Miep has remained honestly humble. The name of the series comes from his personal conviction that there was no heroism in resistance. “Even an ordinary secretary, a housewife, or a teenager can, with her own means, turn on a small light in a dark room,” she wrote. A spark of hope and example for us all. Ever.

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