Eva Schloss, the indomitable Holocaust survivor and stepsister of Anne Frank, has died peacefully in London at the age of 96, leaving behind a legacy that resonates far beyond her own remarkable survival. Her passing on January 3, 2026, was confirmed by the Anne Frank Trust UK and the Anne Frank House, prompting tributes from leaders, educators, and communities she touched throughout her long life.
King Charles, who met and danced with Mrs. Schloss during a 2022 visit to a Jewish community centre in North London, led tributes, describing her as "courageous" and "resilient." In a heartfelt statement, the King wrote, "My wife and I are greatly saddened to hear of the death of Eva Schloss. The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding and resilience through her tireless work for the Anne Frank Trust UK and for Holocaust education across the world. We are both privileged and proud to have known her and we admired her deeply. May her memory be a blessing to us all."
Born Eva Geiringer in Vienna on May 11, 1929, her early years were marked by the rise of Nazi Germany and the annexation of Austria in 1938, which put Austria's Jewish population in immediate peril. According to the Anne Frank House, the Geiringer family sought refuge in Amsterdam in February 1940, settling on Merwedeplein square directly opposite the Frank family. As children, Eva and Anne Frank played together, blissfully unaware of the tragic paths their lives would soon take.
By 1942, the Geiringer family had gone into hiding after Eva's brother Heinz received a summons to work in Germany—a common Nazi ruse for deportation. For two years, the family evaded capture, but their luck ran out when a Dutch nurse, collaborating with the Nazis, betrayed them. On Eva's 15th birthday, May 11, 1944, the family was arrested, brutally interrogated, and deported to Auschwitz concentration camp. Eva and her mother, Elfriede (known as Fritzi), were separated from her father Erich and brother Heinz; tragically, only Eva and her mother survived the Holocaust.
After the Soviet army liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, Eva and her mother returned to Amsterdam, where they encountered Otto Frank, Anne Frank's father and the sole survivor of his immediate family. Otto Frank would become a pivotal figure in Eva's life, encouraging her to pursue photography, which led her to London. In 1952, Eva married Zvi Schloss, a German Jew who had fled to Palestine during the war. Otto Frank later married Eva's mother in 1953 and moved to Basel, Switzerland, further intertwining the families' destinies.
For more than four decades, Eva remained silent about her experiences in Auschwitz, a silence rooted in trauma and the absence of post-war psychological support. She suffered from digestion problems due to near-starvation and frostbite from the infamous winter liberation march, but the psychological scars ran even deeper. "I talked about this for the first time in 1988, when the exhibition dedicated to Anne Frank came to London," she later explained. "I was far from politics, but I realised that the world had not learned any lessons from the events of 1939 to 1945, that wars continued, that persecution, racism, intolerance still existed. And then I began to share my experience, to call for changes in the world."
From that moment, Eva Schloss threw herself into Holocaust education with a passion that would define her later years. She co-founded the Anne Frank Trust UK in 1990, serving as its honorary president and working tirelessly to challenge prejudice through learning from Anne Frank's story and the broader lessons of the Holocaust. The Trust's work has been far-reaching: in 2024 alone, it reached over 132,000 young people through school programs and trained nearly 5,300 peer educators. As Eva herself insisted, "We must never forget the terrible consequences of treating people as 'other.' We need to respect everybody’s races and religions. We need to live together with our differences. The only way to achieve this is through education, and the younger we start the better."
Eva's testimony became a cornerstone for Holocaust remembrance. She recorded her memoirs for the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive in 1996 and for the Anne Frank House, ensuring her story would endure for generations. She chronicled her life in the book Eva’s Story: A Survivor’s Tale and participated in documentaries such as Eva’s Mission and Eva’s Promise, the latter recounting a vow she made to her father and brother during their transport to Auschwitz—to recover and preserve Heinz’s hidden paintings and poems. Eva kept her promise, later donating thirty of Heinz’s paintings to the Dutch Resistance Museum in Amsterdam.
Her achievements and contributions did not go unnoticed. Eva Schloss was awarded an MBE in 2012 for her services to Holocaust education, received an Honorary Doctorate in Civil Law from the University of Northumbria, and was made a Knight of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. As a gesture of reconciliation, Austria restored her citizenship in 2021. In her later years, she continued to support the Anne Frank House, even returning at age 88 to her childhood home in Amsterdam to share her story with students from her old school, poignantly showing them the tattooed number on her arm.
Eva’s impact went beyond formal accolades. According to the BBC, she once remarked, "I have worked very, very hard to change people's attitudes. Each person you convince not to be racist is a positive." Anne Frank Trust chief executive Dan Green described her as "a beacon of hope and resilience," while chairwoman Nicola Cobbold noted, "Above all she believed that to enable peace people should work together as human beings, recognising and challenging prejudice and promoting love and reasonableness."
Eva Schloss is survived by her daughters, sons-in-law, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Her husband Zvi passed away in 2016, nine years before her own death. Her family, in a statement published by Jewish News, remembered her as "a remarkable woman: an Auschwitz survivor, a devoted Holocaust educator, tireless in her work for remembrance, understanding and peace." They hope her legacy will continue to inspire through the books, films, and resources she leaves behind.
As one of the last powerful eyewitnesses to the Nazi death camps, Eva Schloss’s voice may now be silent, but her message—of remembrance, education, and the unending fight against hatred—remains a guiding light for future generations.
