Eva Schloss, Anne Frank’s Stepsister and Holocaust Witness, Dies at 96
Holocaust survivor Eva Schloss, Anne Frank’s stepsister and tireless educator, has died at 96, leaving a legacy of resilience and remembrance.
The Girl Who Outran the Shadows
London—Eva Schloss spent the first half of her life running from the Gestapo and the second half running toward anyone who would listen. On Saturday, the 96-year-old stepsister of Anne Frank slipped away quietly at her home, closing a chapter that began in a Vienna nursery and ended in the record books of history.
A Friendship in the Spotlight
She was born Eva Geiringer, a spirited child who roller-skated along the Merwedeplein in Amsterdam—often past the building where another Jewish girl, Anne Frank, lived with her family. The two girls were playmates before the world collapsed; after the war they became family when Eva’s mother married Anne’s father, Otto Frank.
“Anne wrote about a world that could be. Eva lived to show the world what it must never become.”—Karen Pollock, Holocaust Educational Trust
Survival Against the Odds
In May 1944 the Geiringers were betrayed and deported. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, Eva and her mother were selected for forced labor; her father and brother were sent to the gas chambers. She survived by trading bread for scraps of paper on which she drew portraits of fellow prisoners—tiny acts of defiance that kept her human.
Legacy in Testimony
For four decades Schloss said almost nothing. Then, in 1986, she stepped onto a school stage in North London and found her voice. She would give more than 1,200 talks, warning against antisemitism, xenophobia and Holocaust denial. Her memoir, Eva’s Story, has been translated into 23 languages.
- Survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Mauthausen
- Cofounder of the Anne Frank Trust UK
- Subject of the 2018 documentary 116 Cameras
A Final Farewell
Schloss died surrounded by her three daughters and six grandchildren. In her final interview, taped last month, she urged young people to “be the rescuers, not the bystanders.” Her family said funeral services will be private, but a public memorial is planned for what would have been her 97th birthday next May.