LONDON — Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, half-sister of the young writer Anne Frank and a tireless teacher of the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96.
Britain's Anne Frank Foundation, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died Saturday in London, where she lived.
Britain's King Charles III said he was “honored and proud” to know Schloss, who co-founded a charity helping young people fight prejudice.
“The horrors she endured as a young woman are beyond comprehension, and yet she dedicated the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding and resilience through her tireless work at the Anne Frank Foundation in the UK and Holocaust education around the world,” the king said.
Eva Geiringer was born in Vienna in 1929. Schloss fled with her family to Amsterdam after Nazi Germany annexed Austria. She became friends with another Jewish girl of the same age, Anne Frank, whose diary became one of the most famous chronicles of the Holocaust.
Like the Franks, Eva's family went into hiding for two years to avoid capture after the Nazis occupied the Netherlands. They were eventually betrayed, arrested and sent to the Auschwitz death camp.
Schloss and her mother Fritzi lived 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 Britain, married German Jewish refugee Zvi Schloss and settled in London.
In 1953, her mother married Frank's father, Otto, the only surviving member of his 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not speak publicly about her experiences for decades, later saying that the trauma she suffered during the war left her withdrawn and unable to connect with others.
“I was silent for 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 she spoke at the opening of the Anne Frank exhibition in London in 1986, Schloss made it her mission to educate younger generations about the Nazi genocide. Over the next decades, she spoke in schools and prisons, at international conferences, and told her story in books, including Eve's Story: The Story of Anne Frank's Surviving Half-Sister.
She continued the campaign until she was 90 years old. In 2019, she traveled to Newport Beach, California, to meet teenagers who were photographed doing a Nazi salute at a school party. The following year, she participated in a campaign calling on Facebook to remove Holocaust denial material from the social networking site.
“We must never forget the terrible consequences of treating people as 'others,'” Schloss said in 2024. “We must respect everyone's races and religions. We need to live with our differences. The only way to do this is through education, and the sooner we start, the better.”
Schloss's family remembered her as “a remarkable woman: a survivor of Auschwitz, a dedicated Holocaust educator, tireless in her work for memory, understanding and peace.”
“We hope that her legacy will continue to inspire through the books, films and resources she leaves behind,” the family said in a statement.
Zvi Schloss died in 2016. Eva Schloss is survived by three daughters, as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
