Eva Schloss, an Auschwitz survivor and step-sister of Anne Frank, has died aged 96. She was a renowned Holocaust educator and MBE recipient
LONDON: Holocaust survivor and educator Eva Schloss, the step-sister of diarist Anne Frank, has died aged 96.
Her foundation announced the news on Sunday, with her family expressing “great sadness” at the loss of a “remarkable woman”.
King Charles III and Queen Camilla said they were “greatly saddened” by her passing, adding they “admired her deeply”.
Schloss co-founded the Anne Frank Trust UK in 1990 to educate young 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 first to Belgium and then to Amsterdam, where they lived opposite the Frank family.
She and Anne Frank were the same age and often played together.
Both families were forced into hiding from 1942 onwards.
Eva, her mother, father, and brother were betrayed by a Nazi sympathiser and arrested on her 15th birthday in 1944.
They were deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp, where her father and brother died.
After liberation in 1945, she moved to London to study and later married Zvi Schloss.
Her mother returned to Amsterdam and married Otto Frank, Anne’s father, making Eva Schloss Anne Frank’s posthumous step-sister.
Schloss became a British citizen, authored several books, and travelled the world sharing her testimony.
She was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by then-Prince Charles in 2013.
She also regained her Austrian citizenship in 2021 at the age of 92.
