Amsterdam - An asteroid between the planets Mars and Jupiter on Sunday became known as Miep Gies, in honour of the Dutch woman who preserved the diary of Anne Frank that later became an international bestseller.

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.

The asteroid that was discovered in 1972 would become known worldwide as Miep Gies consists of rock and has a diameter of around 7 kilometres.

Gies 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, Gies held onto the 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.

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."

Gies was born Hermine Santouschitz in Vienna, Austria in 1909. She was sent to the Netherlands as a sickly foster child a few years later.

She has been widely honoured by among others, the State of Israel and has received the Netherlands Order of Oranien-Nassau, as well as the Germany's highest civilian medal, the Federal Cross of Merit First Class.

Gies lives in relative seclusion in her house in the Dutch province of Friesland. (dpa)