He was 96 years old
Austrian photographer and author Eva Schloss, Holocaust survivor and half-sister of Anne Frank, died on Saturday at the age of 96, in London, the British organization Anne Frank Trust, of which she was honorary president, announced on Sunday.
“Eva was an extraordinary woman: Survivor of Auschwitz [campo de concentração na Alemanha nazi]an educator dedicated to the Holocaust, tireless in her work for memory, understanding and peace”, said that institution in a statement.
Eva Schloss was born in Austria in 1929 and the family managed to flee to the Netherlands in 1938, taking refuge in a house in Amsterdam, close to Anne Frank, the German Jewish teenager who would become famous for her diary published posthumously, after having died in a concentration camp.
Like Anne Frank’s family, Eva Schloss’ family hid from the Nazi Germans, but was eventually discovered and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Eva and her mother, Elfriede, survived and were released in 1945, while her father and brother died in captivity.
Shortly after liberation, Eva Schloss would go to London to study, and her mother Elfriede stayed in Amsterdam, eventually marrying Otto Frank, Anne Frank’s father, also a Holocaust survivor.
In London, Eva Schloss became a professional photographer, obtained British nationality and spent decades without talking about her experience in Auschwitz, until the day, in 1988, when London hosted an exhibition dedicated to Anne Frank.
“I was far from getting involved in politics, but I realized that the world had not yet learned about the events between 1939 and 1945, that there were still wars and that persecution, racism and intolerance persisted. So I decided to share my experience”, said Eva Schloss, quoted on the official page dedicated to Anne Frank.
In 1991 he helped found the Anne Frank Trust organization in the United Kingdom, as a way to preserve his half-sister’s legacy and talk about the Holocaust. In 2021, Eva Schloss obtained Austrian nationality.
