Holocaust survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of Anne Frank, died at 96 in London, where she lived, her death was announced Saturday, according to the Anne Frank Trust UK.
The trust said Schloss died Saturday in London. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, and he praised her lifelong work aimed at overcoming hatred and prejudice.
In his statement, the king said 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.”
Schloss, who was honorary president of the Anne Frank Trust UK, was born Eva Geiringer in Vienna in 1929. After Nazi Germany annexed Austria, her family fled to Amsterdam, where she became friends with another Jewish girl of the same age, Anne Frank.
Like the Franks, Schloss’s family spent two years in hiding after the Nazis occupied the Netherlands. The group was later betrayed, arrested and sent to the Auschwitz death camp. The report said Schloss and her mother, Fritzi, survived until Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops in 1945, while her father, Erich, and brother, Heinz, died in Auschwitz.
After the war, Schloss moved to Britain, married German Jewish refugee Zvi Schloss and settled in London. In 1953, her mother married Otto Frank, the report said, describing him as the only member of his immediate family to survive.
The article said Schloss did not speak publicly about her experiences for decades, telling The Associated Press in 2004: “I was silent for years, first because I wasn’t allowed to speak. Then I repressed it. I was angry with the world.”
After she addressed the opening of an Anne Frank exhibition in London in 1986, Schloss made Holocaust education her mission, the report said. She spoke in schools and prisons, at international conferences and in books, including “Eva’s Story: A Survivor’s Tale by the Stepsister of Anne Frank.”
The report said Schloss kept campaigning into her 90s. In 2019, she traveled to Newport Beach, California to meet teenagers who were photographed making Nazi salutes at a high school party, and the following year she was part of a campaign urging Facebook to remove Holocaust-denying material.
In 2024, Schloss said, “We must never forget the terrible consequences of treating people as ‘other,’” and added, “The only way to achieve this is through education, and the younger we start the better.”
In a statement, Schloss’s family remembered her as “a remarkable woman: an Auschwitz survivor, a devoted Holocaust educator, tireless in her work for remembrance, understanding and peace,” and said, “We hope her legacy will continue to inspire through the books, films and resources she leaves behind.” The report said Zvi Schloss died in 2016, and that Schloss is survived by their three daughters, as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
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