7 February 2013
HISTORY: Anne Frank’s stepsister recounts her times in Nazi Germany.
By Kate Weggeland, Staff Writer
“Learning from the Past; Living in the Present; Looking to the Future,” presented by Chabad Jewish Community Center of Riverside, hosted an event on January 19 focusing on Anne Frank’s stepsister, Eva Schloss.
During the event, Schloss recounted her struggles against Nazi Germany.
“Eva Schloss went into hiding in Holland and was betrayed, captured and sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp,” the Press Enterprise reported.
Schloss’s first-hand account helped others gain insight into the life and times of those growing up as World War II refugees in Europe.
Schloss was born in Vienna, Austria in 1929. Her family had an idyllic life prior to the Holocaust. Schloss did not know how serious their situation was until her family fled to Brussels, Belgium as refugees.
“We were suddenly poor and not wanted,” Schloss explained.
In February 1940, Schloss and her family relocated to Amsterdam, Holland, where she first met Anne Frank.
In 1942, Schloss and her mother were separated from the rest of their family. When Schloss’s mother heard of “a safe house from a nurse in Amsterdam,” they ventured to that place,”but when they arrived, it turned out to be a trap—a Nazi house,” the Press Enterprise said. They were captured on May 11, 1944.
Schloss was taken to Auschwitz death camp. “We knew about Auschwitz. We knew it was a death camp, not a working camp, not a labor camp,” Schloss recounted.
Schloss and her mother were the only survivers of their family. In 1945, they were evacuated by the Russian Army. “Her mother went on to marry Otto Frank, the widowed father of Anne Frank, in 1953, making Schloss Anne’s stepsister,” the Press Enterprise reported.
Photo contributed by pe.com