For years, Eva Schloss wanted to move past the horrors she experienced during the Holocaust.
But the memories haunted her. Her stepsister haunted her.
On Sunday, Feb. 18, Schloss, the 88-year-old stepsister of Anne Frank, will speak at Tucson Magnet High School, 400 N. Second Ave. (The venue was changed from the Tucson Jewish Community Center to accommodate "overwhelming response," event organizers said on Feb. 9.)
As she travels to share her story and her family’s, Schloss’ identity is forever tethered to the girl she played with after school in Amsterdam, who died in the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.
They weren’t stepsisters when Anne Frank was alive. Schloss gained that role when her mother married Otto Frank, father of the famous teen diarist, in 1953 after both returned to Amsterdam following the war. Frank lost his wife and two daughters. Schloss’ mother lost her husband and son.
Frank’s mission to bring Anne’s story to the world was at odds with Schloss’ own desire to move past the tragedy. It was decades before she chose to speak about her own Holocaust experiences.
Tucson Rabbi Yehuda Ceitlin of Chabad Tucson said he often hears from parents and teachers when classes study “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.” He hopes that the chance to hear from a survivor with a personal connection to Anne will give the stories more substance.
“I think her stepsister’s visit will make the stories and the era more factual and tangible for them,” he said of Schloss’ visit. “Obviously we’re slowly growing more distant from the memory of the Holocaust as time goes on and fewer survivors are left, and I think its lessons remain relevant and essential today.”
Schloss agrees. She speaks now so that we don’t forget.
Schloss has joined other Holocaust survivors in participating in a virtual reality project by the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation to record interactive videos that can answer hundreds of questions — a hologram, essentially. This means that an image of Schloss will be able to interact with and tell her story to future generations.
Born in Vienna, Austria, Schloss fled with her family to Belgium and then the Netherlands. In Amsterdam, they lived near the Frank family. Like the Franks, Schloss, her mother, father and brother spent time in hiding, before a betrayal led to discovery on Schloss’ 15th birthday.
The family was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau where Schloss spent nine months. Her father and brother did not survive the experience.
“We were nevermore a family like I had hoped we would be,” she said, speaking by phone from London. “When you have lost your only brother and father, it’s a very tough thing. ... My brother was such a very talented and wonderful young man and this is something that I’ll never get over, that I lost him and he never got a chance to live. You’re born once, and you make the most of your life and when it’s cut short. ... That’s a tragedy.”
After moving to England and marrying her husband Zvi Schloss in 1952, she raised three daughters (and now has five grandchildren).
She didn’t begin sharing her story until the 1980s and now travels often to speak about Holocaust education to children and adults, especially in the U.K. and U.S. She has worked with the Anne Frank Trust UK and has written three books.
Here are excerpts from our conversation with Schloss; portions have been edited for clarity.
So you didn’t talk about your experience during the Holocaust for years?
“It’s not just me. That was the general trend, that for 30 to 40 years it was too hard to speak about it, and besides that, everybody had suffered. ... So people wanted to move on and didn’t really want to know or hear any more horror stories. But once the world realized that we hadn’t learned anything and the hatred and discrimination and genocide still goes on, then we realized we were very much affected by this and we should speak up and tell how bad it is to live under those circumstances.”
Have you personally noticed increasing confidence among hate groups such as neo-Nazis?
“You do hear today that antisemitism is on the rise. ... But I must say I haven’t experienced it. ... There is hatred against different races and nationalities and religions and this is so unnecessary because it’s an old problem, whether Muslim, Jewish or Catholic. If we are happy about who we are, why should other people be upset with it as long as we are decent people? ... There is definitely prejudice, but the white race is not superior. All people have good people, bad people and clever people everywhere. ... I feel very much for (refugees) because I had to leave my country, which I didn’t want to. We had a happy life, but there are circumstances, and you have to stay safe and leave, and we were not accepted either.”
How well did you know Anne?
“We were all in the same circle and played outside after school (in Amsterdam). That was my favorite at the time. We were the same age and we played hopscotch and skipping and all the games. ... I was still shy and she was very outgoing and I looked up to her. She was a month younger than me, but had so much more self-confidence.”
How did you feel having your identity always connected to hers?
“For many many years, I didn’t like it. I thought, ‘Well, I went through the same thing as her and I survived.’ ... I could understand it, but I didn’t like it, and I started speaking and there was always a big photo of Anne. ... Eventually I said, ‘I’ve got a life. I got married. I have children. She was killed.’ ... So I accepted it. She is the most famous child of the Holocaust.”
What kept you going while hiding in the camp, and then after?
“We had a very good life, and I was 15 and definitely not ready to give all of this up and die, so I held on and never ever gave up and thought, ‘This can’t last so long’ and ‘I have to make it.’ And I was quite a strong little girl, sporty and tough, and it all helped me.”
Why do you continue to share your story?
“I’m not always very optimistic. ... But having lived through the worst and I got out of it. ... Life can’t always go downhill. It will go up again, and I can give people hope. I’m not saying it’s not going to be terrible, but we can get over it. ... To tell my story, it’s a very very dark story, but there is always an end. ... Sometimes in the evening, I would get sad, but then in the morning the sun is shining and life has a lot to offer and it’s not so bad. But it’s always with you. You always think about it.”
