Eva Schloss, the stepsister of Anne Frank and a Holocaust survivor, attends a March 2019 information convention in Newport Seaside, Calif.
Jae C. Hong/AP
conceal caption
toggle caption
Jae C. Hong/AP
LONDON — Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator in regards to the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96.
The Anne Frank Belief UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, mentioned she died Saturday in London, the place she lived.
Britain’s King Charles III mentioned he was “privileged and proud” to have identified Schloss, who co-founded the charitable belief to assist younger individuals problem prejudice.
“The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding and resilience through her tireless work for the Anne Frank Trust UK and for Holocaust education across the world,” the king mentioned.
Born Eva Geiringer in Vienna in 1929, Schloss fled together with her household to Amsterdam after Nazi Germany annexed Austria. She grew to become buddies with one other Jewish woman of the identical age, Anne Frank, whose diary would grow to be probably the most well-known chronicles of the Holocaust.
Just like the Franks, Eva’s household spent two years in hiding to keep away from seize after the Nazis occupied the Netherlands. They have been ultimately betrayed, arrested and despatched to the Auschwitz dying camp.
Schloss and her mom Fritzi survived till the camp was liberated by Soviet troops in 1945. Her father Erich and brother Heinz died in Auschwitz.
After the battle, Eva moved to Britain, married German Jewish refugee Zvi Schloss and settled in London.
In 1953, her mom married Frank’s father, Otto, the one member of his quick household to outlive. Anne Frank died of typhus within the Bergen-Belsen focus camp on the age of 15, months earlier than the tip of the battle.
Schloss didn’t converse publicly about her experiences for many years, later saying that wartime trauma had made her withdrawn and unable to attach with others.
“I was silent for years, first because I wasn’t allowed to speak. Then I repressed it. I was angry with the world,” she instructed The Related Press in 2004.
However after she addressed the opening of an Anne Frank exhibition in London in 1986, Schloss made it her mission to coach youthful generations in regards to the Nazi genocide. Over the next many years she spoke in faculties and prisons, at worldwide conferences and instructed her story in books together with “Eva’s Story: A Survivor’s Tale by the Stepsister of Anne Frank.”
She saved campaigning into her 90s. In 2019, she traveled to Newport Seaside, California, to satisfy youngsters who have been photographed making Nazi salutes at a highschool occasion. The next yr she was a part of a marketing campaign urging Fb to take away Holocaust-denying materials from the social networking website.
“We must never forget the terrible consequences of treating people as ‘other,'” Schloss mentioned in 2024. “We need to respect everybody’s races and religions. We need to live together with our differences. The only way to achieve this is through education, and the younger we start the better.”
Schloss’ household remembered her as “a remarkable woman: an Auschwitz survivor, a devoted Holocaust educator, tireless in her work for remembrance, understanding and peace.”
“We hope her legacy will continue to inspire through the books, films and resources she leaves behind,” the household mentioned in an announcement.
Zvi Schloss died in 2016. Eva Schloss is survived by their three daughters, in addition to grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
