Eva Schloss, Holocaust survivor and half-sister of Anne Frank, dies at 96

Eva Schloss, Auschwitz survivor, half-sister of teenage journalist Anne Frank and a tireless educator on the horrors of the Holocaustdied. She was 96 years old.

THE Anne Frank Trust United Kingdomof which Schloss was honorary president, said she died Saturday in London, where she lived.

The Schloss family remembers her as “a remarkable woman: a survivor of Auschwitz, a dedicated Holocaust educator, tireless in her work for memory, understanding and peace.”

“We hope her legacy continues to inspire us through the books, films and resources she leaves behind,” the family said in a statement.

Born Eva Geiringer in Vienna in 1929, Schloss fled with her family to Amsterdam after Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria. She became friends with another Jewish girl of the same age, Anne Frank, whose diary would become one of the most famous chronicles of the Holocaust.

Like the Franks, Eva’s family spent two years in hiding to avoid capture after the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. They were eventually betrayed, arrested and sent to the Auschwitz extermination camp.

“Eighty people were pushed in there and there were two buckets: one with water, one to use as a toilet,” Schloss recalled in 2019. CBS Minnesota about Auschwitz. “Once a day, they threw big pieces of bread in there, like they were feeding wild animals.”

“He lives with me all the time. All the time,” she added.

Schloss and his mother, Fritzi, survived until the camp was liberated by Soviet troops in 1945. His father, Erich, and brother Heinz died at Auschwitz.

After the war, Eva moved to Britain, married German Jewish refugee Zvi Schloss, and settled in London.

In 1953, his mother married Frank’s father, Otto, the only surviving member of his immediate family. Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the age of 15, a few months before the end of the war.

Schloss did not speak publicly about her experiences for decades, later saying that the trauma of war left her withdrawn and unable to connect with others.

After giving a speech at the opening of an Anne Frank exhibition in London in 1986, Schloss made it his mission to educate younger generations about the Nazi genocide.

“We said: ‘Never again, Auschwitz.’ We learned our lesson,” Schloss told CBS Minnesota. “The Germans weren’t all sympathetic to Hitler, but they were bystanders and that’s what I tell people they shouldn’t be.”

Over the next decades, she spoke in schools and prisons, at international conferences and told her story in books, including “Eva’s Story: A Survivor’s Account of Anne Frank’s Half-Sister.”

She continued to campaign well into her 90s. In 2019, she traveled to Newport Beach, California, to meet teenagers photographed giving the Nazi salute at a high school party. The following year, she participated in a campaign urging Facebook to remove any Holocaust-denying content from the social networking site.

“People should never forget what happened and how it happened,” Schloss told reporters after the closed-door meeting with students, according to the newspaper. CBS Los Angeles. “I was shocked that in 2019 – in a well-educated town, in a very educated school – incidents like this could still happen.”

Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, co-founder of the charity aimed at helping young people fight prejudice.

“The horrors she endured as a young woman are impossible to understand and yet she dedicated 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 said.

Zvi Schloss died in 2016. Eva Schloss is survived by their three daughters, as well as their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.