Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
Auschwitz Survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator who spread the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She is 96 years old.
The Anne Frank Trust in Britain, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday. Londonwhere she lives.
king of england charles iii Schloss, who is co-founder of a charitable trust that helps young people challenge prejudice, said it was an “honor and pride” to know Schloss.
King said: “The horrors she experienced as a young woman were incomprehensible, but 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 in the UK and Holocaust education around the world.”
Schloss was born Eva Geiringer in Vienna in 1929. After Nazi Germany annexed Austria, she and her family fled to Amsterdam. She became friends with another person Jewish The same year as Anne Frank, a girl whose diary went on to become one of the most famous chronicles of the Holocaust.
Like Frank’s family, Eva’s family went into hiding for two years after the Nazis occupied the Netherlands to avoid capture. They were eventually betrayed, arrested and sent to the Auschwitz death camp.
Schloss and her mother Fritz survived until the camp was liberated by Soviet troops in 1945. Her father Erich and brother Heinz died in Auschwitz.
After the war, Eva moved to U.K.Married German Jewish refugee Zvi Schloss and settled in London.
In 1953, her mother married Frank’s father, Otto, the only surviving member of Frank’s immediate family. Anne Frank died of typhus at the age of 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp just months before the war ended.
Schloss did not speak publicly about her experience for decades and later said the wartime trauma left her withdrawn and unable to connect with others.
“I was silent for many years, first because I wasn’t allowed to speak. Then I suppressed it. I was angry at the world,” she told The Associated Press in 2004.
But after speaking 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. Over the following decades, she spoke at schools, prisons, international conferences, and told her story in books such as “Eva’s Story: The Survivor Story of Anne Frank’s Stepsisters.”
She continued to campaign into her 90s. In 2019, she traveled to Newport Beach, California, to meet with teenagers who were photographed giving the Nazi salute at a high school party. The next year, she joined a campaign urging Facebook to remove Holocaust-denying material from the social network.
“We must never forget the terrible consequences of treating people as ‘others,'” Schloss said in 2024. “We need to respect everyone’s race and religion. We need to live with differences. The only way to do that is through education, and the younger you start, the better.”
Schloss’ family recalled her as “a remarkable woman: a survivor of Auschwitz, a devoted Holocaust educator who worked tirelessly for remembrance, understanding and peace.”
“We hope the books, films and resources she left behind will continue to inspire her,” her family said in a statement.
Zvi Schloss died in 2016. Eva Schloss is survived by three daughters as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren.