Anne Frank's stepsister decries racism, recalls Holocaust

KNOXVILLE Tenn. — Holocaust survivor Eva Schloss sees parallels between the 1940s, when Jews fleeing the Nazis were denied entry into safe countries, and the plight of today's refugees.

"The world is not at peace now," Schloss told a full Knoxville Civic Auditorium on Tuesday evening. "There are many, many wars."

But now, she says, people are more willing to speak up to resist what they see as wrong. "And that is important. We should all speak up about what should be done. Racism is still with us. There's just one race — the human race."

She also had some advice for President Trump in his pledge to "make American great again." Support education for all people, she said. "Everybody has to have a good education. That's important for Jewish parents. Look what we can accomplish."

Schloss, 87, came to Knoxville from her London home in a visit sponsored by the Knoxville Jewish Community, Tennessee Holocaust Commission and East Tennessee Foundation. She's best known as a childhood playmate and stepsister of Holocaust victim and "The Diary of Anne Frank" author Anne Frank. She talked about Frank and her own life during and after World War II in a question-and-answer interview with Knoxville talk radio host Hallerin Hilton Hill.

Seated in matching leather chairs, Schloss and Hill conducted an on-stage conversation before the packed auditorium. Schloss often answered Hill's questions in the form of stories. Often stories were heart-wrenching as when she told of Nazis beating her after she was arrested on her 15th birthday, or of Auschwitz Dr. Josef "Angel of Death" Mengele quickly deciding the Jews who lived and those who marched to gas chambers.

Other times a smiling Schloss made the audience laugh, recounting how Anne Frank was called "Mrs. Quack Quack" in school because she talked so much and sometimes had to write "I must not talk" as punishment.

Schloss talked about her "very, very loving family" and "very, very happy childhood" growing up in Vienna. But the family had to flee the country after Germans invaded in 1940. They moved to Belgium, then Amsterdam. That’s where Schloss met Anne Frank. Both were 11 years old,

Anne liked boys already and "was much more sophisticated" than tomboy Schloss. "She was not famous then," Schloss said with a smile.

Schloss "felt quite secure" in Holland but when Nazis took control of that country, life for Jewish refugees slowly, tragically began to change. Slowly Jews were restricted from going to the movies or sporting events. When she was 13, Jewish young people ages 16-25 were called to Germany to work in factories. Instead, her family and Anne Frank's family hid, helped by "wonderful" members of the Dutch Resistance. She and her mother Fritzi Geiringer hid in one location; her father Erich and older brother Heinz another. "We knew what it meant to go to Germany," she said.

After two years Nazis found and arrested the family, shipping them to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Schloss and her mother survived; her father and brother didn't. "It was a miracle. We weren't supposed to survive," she said.

In 1953, Fritzi Geiringer married Otto Frank, Anne Frank's widowed father. Frank and his devotion to his daughter's diary encouraged Schloss to find a legacy left by her brother and father. During their two years in hiding, the men painted. Heinz hid 30 canvases in the floorboard of the attic where he'd hid. He told his sister the paintings' location as they rode on the cattle car to Auschwitz.

"I saw what the diary did for him (Otto Frank)," she said. "I said to mother, 'We must go to get the paintings back.' "

The women found the paintings. Now two original oils and a series of prints are on exhibit through Feb. 26 at the Knoxville Museum of Art. Schloss planned to visit the display Wednesday and encouraged her audience to do so also. Anne Frank "has become immortal" through her diary, and Schloss hopes her brother's art will help him be remembered.

"His loss is a crime to humanity," she said of her brother. "He's always in my heart. There's not a day I don't think about him. ... Life is so precious. You don't give this up."

At one point in their talk, Hill asked Schloss to show him the concentration camp number tattooed on her arm. She rolled up her left sleeve to show faint, slightly smudged black numbers. "That's part of me now. That doesn't hurt me anymore. "

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