Eva Schloss, Holocaust survivor and Anne Frank

Eva Schloss, Auschwitz survivor, stepsister of teenage journalist Anne Frank and tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96 years old.

The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she had lived.

Schloss’ family remembered her as “an extraordinary woman: a survivor of Auschwitz, a devoted Holocaust educator, tireless in her work for remembrance, understanding and peace.”

“We hope his legacy continues to inspire us through the books, films and resources he leaves behind,” the family said in a statement.

Born Eva Geiringer in Vienna in 1929, Schloss fled with her family to Amsterdam after Nazi Germany annexed Austria. She became friends with another Jewish girl the same age, Anne Frank, whose diary would become one of the most famous chronicles of the Holocaust.

Like the Franks, Eva’s family spent two years in hiding to avoid capture after the Nazis occupied the Netherlands. They were eventually betrayed, arrested and sent to the Auschwitz death camp.

“They pushed eighty people in there and there were two buckets, one with water and one to use as a toilet,” Schloss recalled in 2019. News Minnesota about Auschwitz. “Once a day, they threw in large pieces of bread, as if feeding wild animals.”

“He lives with me all the time. All the time,” he added.

Schloss and his mother, Fritzi, survived until Soviet troops liberated the camp in 1945. His father, Erich, and brother Heinz died at Auschwitz.

After the war, Eva moved to Britain, married German Jewish refugee Zvi Schloss and settled in London.

In 1953, her mother married Frank’s father, Otto, the only surviving member of her immediate family. Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the age of 15, months before the end of the war.

Schloss did not speak publicly about her experiences for decades, later saying that the trauma of war had made her withdrawn and unable to connect with others.

After giving a speech at the opening of an Anne Frank exhibition in London in 1986, Schloss set out to educate younger generations about the Nazi genocide.

“We said, ‘Never again, Auschwitz.’ We have learned our lesson,” Schloss told News Minnesota. “The Germans weren’t all for Hitler, but they were spectators and that’s what I tell people they shouldn’t be.”

Over the following decades, she spoke in schools and prisons, at international conferences and told her story in books, including “The Story of Eve: A Survivor’s Tale of Anne Frank’s Stepsister.”

He continued campaigning until he was 90 years old. In 2019, he traveled to Newport Beach, California, to meet teenagers who were photographed giving the Nazi salute at a high school party. The following year, he was part of a campaign urging Facebook to remove Holocaust-denying material from the social media site.

“People should never forget what happened and how it happened,” Schloss told reporters after the closed-door meeting with students, it was reported. News Los Angeles. “I was surprised that in 2019, in a well-educated city, in a school with a very high level of education, incidents like this were still happening.”

Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have met Schloss, who co-founded the charitable foundation to help young people challenge prejudice.

“The horrors he endured as a young man are impossible to fathom, and yet he dedicated the rest of his life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding and resilience through his tireless work for the Anne Frank Trust in the UK and for Holocaust education around the world,” the king said.

Zvi Schloss died in 2016. Eva Schloss is survived by her three daughters, as well as her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.