Eva Schloss, Auschwitz survivor and tireless Holocaust educator, dies at 96

Eva Schloss, who survived Auschwitz and devoted the second half of her life to Holocaust education, died in London on 3 January 2026 at the age of 96, the Anne Frank House said. Born Eva Geiringer in Austria in 1929, she fled with her Jewish family after the Nazi annexation of 1938, first to Belgium and then to Amsterdam, where they lived on the same square as the Frank family. Eva and Anne Frank, born about a month apart, became playmates.

Both families went into hiding in 1942. The Geiringers were betrayed and arrested in May 1944, on Eva's fifteenth birthday, and deported to Auschwitz. Eva and her mother survived; her father, Erich, and her brother, Heinz, did not. Anne Frank died in Bergen-Belsen in 1945. After the war, Eva and her mother came to know Otto Frank, Anne's father and the only member of his family to survive, and in 1953 her mother married him, making Eva the posthumous stepsister of the diarist.

Schloss moved to London in 1952, married Zvi Schloss and raised three daughters. For decades she did not speak publicly about the camps; she began to do so after Otto Frank's death in 1980. In 1990 she co-founded the Anne Frank Trust UK, which works in schools and prisons to challenge prejudice, and served as its honorary president. She wrote several books about her experiences and gave talks around the world, often several in a day. She was appointed MBE for her educational work and in 2021, aged 92, regained the Austrian citizenship she had been stripped of as a child.

Tributes came from King Charles III and Queen Camilla, who praised her tireless work for Holocaust education, and from the Anne Frank Trust, which called her a beacon of hope and resilience.