LONDON—Eva Schloss, the Auschwitz survivor who dedicated decades to educating people about the Holocaust and was the step-sister of diarist Anne Frank, has died aged 96, her foundation announced Sunday.
In a tribute, her family expressed their “great sadness” at the loss of this “remarkable woman: an Auschwitz survivor, a devoted Holocaust educator, tireless in her work for remembrance, understanding and peace”.
Schloss died on Jan. 3 in London, according to the Anne Frank House.
King Charles III, who danced with Schloss at an event in London in 2022, and his wife Camilla, patron of her Anne Frank Trust UK foundation, said they were “greatly saddened”.
“We are both privileged and proud to have known her and we admired her deeply,” the royal couple said in a statement.
Schloss co-founded the trust in 1990 to educate people about the Holocaust and combat prejudice.
Born Eva Geiringer in Austria in 1929, she was a child when the Nazis annexed her country.
Her Jewish family fled to Belgium and then Amsterdam where they settled opposite Anne Frank’s house.
Frank’s accounts of the Holocaust have become a symbol of the suffering inflicted by the Nazis during World War II.
The two girls were the same age and often played together.
But from 1942 onwards, both families had to go into hiding.
Schloss, her mother Elfriede, her father Erich and her brother Heinz were betrayed two years later by a Nazi sympathizer. They were arrested on her fifteenth birthday and sent to the Auschwitz extermination camp in May 1944.
Schloss was able to stay in touch with her mother but was separated from her father and brother, who both died in the camps.
