Eva Schloss’s sense of humor was still very prevalent and was able to garner more than a few laughs from the audience this past Monday. The MSC’s Great Hall was filled past capacity and the Facebook event had listed that over 150 people were going to be in attendence. Speaking internationally wasn’t Schloss’s first choice in a life after the Holocaust. It wasn’t until the 1980s Schloss opened up about her experiences in the concentration camps. “It was like a watershed the first time I spoke,” Schloss recollected once she finally broke past the emotional block that prevented her from talking about her experience. Schloss has still not told her husband or her three children about everything that she faced during the Holocaust. “It is very difficult to talk about something so horrific,” Schloss insisted, though she has now written three books about her experiences and goes on speaking tours around the world.
The woman who sat before the crowd and shared her story did not make it seem the retelling was taking its toll. Schloss’s voice never wavered and her memories were stated as a simple matter of fact regarding what happened. After her liberation from the concentration camp and the end of the war Schloss held out hope that her father and older brother had survived. When the Red Cross letter informing that both of them had died in Mauthausen arrived, Schloss became very bitter at the world and depressed for a time. Time has since healed that bitterness and now whenever she mentioned her brother and father her voice became a little softer. The fondness Schloss had for both of them has not diminished after all these years. Her father had, “made a brave kid out of me” from the beginning which she attributes to her survival.
Schloss’s father was able to get his family into hiding after the Nazi’s took over Holland with the help of the Dutch Resistance. Though the family was split up, they were able to stay safe for two years until they were betrayed to the Nazis. “It was my fifteenth birthday, a Tuesday,” was how Schloss recalled it. After that time, the family was split up indefinitely as they were taken the Auschwitz in a cattle car and separated into the men’s and women’s camps. Schloss survived numerous selections, visits from Dr. Mengele, and abhorrent conditions until being liberated by the Russians. Schloss and her mother searched for their family members for months before receiving the Red Cross’s letter.
“I hated the world,” Schloss stated after learning of her beloved brother and father’s deaths. The words from a father figure and his insistence for Schloss to move to England to pursue photography began the long healing process. “Otto Frank told me to try to put a smile on my face and go out into the world.” Schloss knew the Franks before the war, and had Otto stay with them after liberation while they all searched for their loved ones. Schloss’s mother and Otto grew close as they both worked towards the publication of Anne’s diary and secretly married. Schloss herself had been proposed to earlier but was afraid of leaving her mother alone. That changed when she learned of her mother and soon to be stepfather’s secret engagement and went back to the young man, casually telling him, “well I guess you can marry me now.” She and her “Israeli boy” have now been happily married sixty-two years.
Resilience and hope are the message that Schloss wishes to convey in her story. The camps had changed her and taken away her loved ones, but she was eventually able to overcome her bitterness and hate. She has gone on to have a family of her own and was able gather up the courage speak to others about her experience, things that the Nazis had worked so hard to take from her. It was difficult at first to step out of the shadow her step sister, Anne Frank, had cast over her with the fame and notoriety the publication of her diary brought. In time Eva says she was able to find her own voice outside of Anne’s, “I am a person in my own right.” With a husband, three children, and five grandchildren, Schloss feels that she cannot hold jealously over a girl who was murdered by the Nazis. “She was very good at being observant, and had a lot of wise things to say. If she were still alive I’m sure she would have made a very good writer.”
The reason Schloss says she still feels the need to speak to groups is that the world still hasn’t learned anything from the Holocaust. Genocides are still happening globally and Schloss hopes that her presentations gets the new generation to see the consequences of these actions and learn from them. Schloss is still searching for answers on why she and her family were put through the Holocaust but has learned that having trust in life is better than not having a belief in anything. Schloss does adamantly believe that there is more to life than being born and dying. “My brother once asked what will happen to us when we die, and my father told him that we will live on, someone will remember us and we will not be forgotten.” The greatest gift Schloss could give her brother was to write his story down and publish it. The Promise is one of her three books that she has written about her life and the Holocaust that tells the story of her brother. His story, along with his paintings Schloss has donated to the Amsterdam Dutch Resistance Museum, has ensured her brother is not forgotten in time. After all, who better knows that words can immortalize a life better than the stepsister of Anne Frank?
A Heinz Geiringer painting; a self portrait of him in hiding.
*At Stout next Monday the Ally Initiatives are hosting a Genocide Activities meeting to initiate a conversation on what this generation can do to prevent them as well as a speaker on Religion in Genocide. For more information on these events happening next week please visit the Stout webpage.