Anne Frank’s step-sister and Holocaust survivor Eva Schloss dies at 96

LONDON - Ms Eva Schloss, the Auschwitz survivor who dedicated decades to educating people about the Holocaust and was the step-sister of diarist Anne Frank, has died at the age of 96, her foundation announced on Jan 4.

In a tribute, her family expressed their “great sadness” at the loss of this “remarkable woman: an Auschwitz survivor, a devoted Holocaust educator, tireless in her work for remembrance, understanding and peace”.

Ms Schloss died on Jan 3 in London, according to the Anne Frank House.

King Charles III, who danced with Ms Schloss at an event in London in 2022, and his wife Camilla, patron of her Anne Frank Trust UK foundation, said they were “greatly saddened”.

“We are both privileged and proud to have known her, and we admired her deeply,” the royal couple said in a statement.

Ms Schloss co-founded the trust in 1990 to educate people about the Holocaust and combat prejudice.

Born Eva Geiringer in Austria in 1929, she was a child when the Nazis annexed her country.

Her Jewish family fled to Belgium and then Amsterdam, where they settled opposite Anne Frank’s house.

Frank’s accounts of the Holocaust have become a symbol of the suffering inflicted by the Nazis during World War II.

The two girls were the same age and often played together.

But from 1942 onwards, both families had to go into hiding.

Ms Schloss, her mother Elfriede, her father Erich and her brother Heinz were betrayed two years later by a Nazi sympathiser. They were arrested on her 15th birthday and sent to the Auschwitz extermination camp in May 1944.

Ms Schloss was able to stay in touch with her mother but was separated from her father and brother, who both died in the camps.

Anne Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

After the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet army in 1945, Ms Schloss and her mother returned to the Netherlands, where they met Anne’s father Otto Frank, who was a widower upon his own return from Auschwitz.

Mr Frank encouraged Ms Schloss to pursue photography. In 1952, she moved to London to study and met her future husband, Mr Zvi Schloss.

Her mother Elfriede and Mr Frank married in 1953.

Ms Schloss and her husband, who have three daughters, obtained British citizenship. She also regained her Austrian citizenship in 2021, at the age of 92.

She wrote several books and recounted her experiences around the world, and was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2013.

Ms Gillian Walnes, vice-president of the Anne Frank Trust UK, said in a statement: “Into her 90s, she spoke with tireless passion, often giving several talks a day, including in prisons and schools.

“Eva’s legacy lives on in the lives she touched and the history she so bravely kept alive.” AFP