Anne Frank’s half-sister Eva Schloss died at the age of 96. The Anne Frank Trust announced this on Sunday, TASR reports based on the AFP agency. The family expressed “deep sorrow” at the loss of “an exceptional woman – an Auschwitz survivor, a dedicated Holocaust educator, tireless in her work for remembrance, understanding and peace.”
Schloss was born Eva Geiringer in Austria in 1929. After the Nazi annexation, her family went first to Belgium and then to Amsterdam, where they lived opposite the house of the Frank family. Eva and Anna were the same age and often played together. Since 1942, both families had to hide.
On Eva’s 15th birthday in May 1944, the Nazis arrested Eva, her mother Elfriede, father Erich and brother Heinz and sent them to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Father and brother perished in the camp.
After the end of the war in 1945, Eva moved to London, where she studied and met her future husband Zvi Schloss. Her mother returned to Amsterdam and married Anne Frank’s father, Otto, who was widowed during the war.
Schloss founded the Anne Frank Trust in 1990 to educate young people about the Holocaust and fight prejudice. She wrote several books in which she described her experiences from all over the world. In 2013, the current British King Charles III, then Prince of Wales, appointed her a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).
