LONDON — The stepsister of Anne Frank, and survivor of Auschwitz, Eva Schloss, has died at the age of 96.
The Anne Frank Trust UK announced her death, saying she passed away on Saturday in London, The Associated Press reported.
Schloss left Vienna with her family when Nazi Germany annexed Austria, fleeing to Amsterdam. She became friends with Frank there.
The Schloss family was in hiding from the Nazis for two years before a person who took them in betrayed them and the family was sent to the Auschwitz death camp, Sky News reported.
Eva Schloss was a teenager at the time.
She and her mother were separated from her father and brother at Auschwitz. Eva never saw her brother after that, but did see her father briefly a few times. Neither man survived, while Eva and her mother were liberated, Sky News reported.
Eva moved to Britain after the war and eventually married German Jewish refugee Zvi Schloss.
Her mother, Fritzi, married Franks’ father, Otto, in 1953. He was the only member of his family to survive the concentration camps. Anne Frank died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen. She was 15.
Eva Schloss was not able to speak about her experiences during the war for several decades, saying that the trauma made her withdrawn and unable to connect with others, the AP reported.
“I was silent for years, first because I wasn’t allowed to speak. Then I repressed it. I was angry with the world,” she told the AP in 2024.
That changed after 1986 when she spoke at the opening of an Anne Frank exhibition. She spoke at schools, prisons and international conferences about her story. Eva Schloss published “Eva’s Story: A Survivor’s Tale by the Stepsister of Anne Frank.”
In 2019, she went to California to speak with teens who were photographed giving the Nazi salute at a party and pushed Facebook to remove Holocaust-denying posts from the platform.
Her family said she was “a remarkable woman: an Auschwitz survivor, a devoted Holocaust educator, tireless in her work for remembrance, understanding and peace.”
King Charles III issued a statement saying he was “privileged and proud” to know her.
“The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding and resilience through her tireless work for the Anne Frank Trust UK and for Holocaust education across the world,” Charles said.
Eva Schloss leaves behind her three daughters and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the AP reported.
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