Anne Frank's Stepsister
Diversity Transfer ProgramAnne Frank’s stepsister shares story with SCC students
SCC students had the rare opportunity to meet Anne Frank’s stepsister, Eva Schloss, at a campus lecture Oct 9. Schloss spoke candidly to a full audience about her experience during the Holocaust, and her relationship to Anne Frank.
Schloss’ story had many similarities to Franks’. Both girls were born in the same year (1929) and emigrated to Amsterdam with their families in the late 1930s to escape Nazi persecution. Their families went into hiding, were betrayed, arrested and sent to Auschwitz.
The girls met and became friends in Amsterdam. They were not very close and didn’t share all the same interests. “I was a wild tomboy,” said Eva. “Anna liked to dress well and was always eyeing the boys.”
In May 1940 life changed drastically for the girls. Germany invaded Holland. “The Dutch gave in after five days,” said Schloss. As things became worse, the families of Schloss and Frank went into hiding. They lived in constant fear of being discovered.
In May 1944, Schloss’s family was betrayed by an informant and arrested by the Nazis. She was 15 when they were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. In August 1944, Franks’ family was also arrested and sent to Auschwitz.
Schloss and her mother were liberated by the Russians in January 1945. They survived more than seven months of captivity in Auschwitz. The Red Cross informed them about the death of their father and brother. Anne Frank had died of typhoid fever in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The only surviving member of Frank’s family was her father, Otto Frank.
After the war, Schloss and her mother crossed paths with Frank’s father and became friends with him. “He was 57 years old and a beaten man,” said Schloss. Yet, her mother married him in 1953.
In a phone interview, Schloss spoke openly about how she found strength during her ordeal. She said that her youth and will to live helped. “It was definitely not religion or belief,” she stated. Her mother also played an important role in her survival, as a protector and nurturer. At one point her father somehow came to visit her in Auschwitz. Knowing her father was alive also gave her strength.
Life after the war was difficult. “I felt relief but was shattered through the experience and the loss,” Schloss said. “I was full of hatred and suspicion; it took 20 years to become an ordinary person again.”
She mentioned how people didn’t want to talk about the Holocaust. “The world wasn’t ready to listen,” Schloss said. In the ‘80s survivors opened up, and suddenly the world was interested in listening.”
Schloss said she will continue lecturing, as she feels it is important and also gratifying that people want to know and are interested. She would like people to remember the suffering of the children and others during the Holocaust. “We have to learn to live together as a society, and learn to be tolerant to differences in religion and race,” she said.
According to a brief autobiography published on the Web, Schloss has been active in Holocaust Education since 1985. Her book, “Eva’s Story,” was published in 1988. It talks in detail about her experiences before and after the war.
There is also an educational play called “And Then They Came for Me: Remembering the World of Anne Frank.” She hopes the play will come to the Children’s Theatre in Seattle. Paintings created by her father and brother while in hiding, are currently on tour with the play. These paintings were hidden and rescued after the war.