Eva Schloss obituary

"At the time, in 1940, when the 11-year-old Eva Schloss (then Eva Geiringer), newly arrived from Vienna, played with a group of children that included Anne Frank in the grassy square between their Amsterdam flats after school, she could not have imagined how intimately linked her name and Anne's would become. Eva, who has died aged 96, and Anne were not close: although born a month apart and neighbours in Merwedeplein (Anne lived at flat 37 and Eva at 46),"

"But when Eva's mother married Otto Frank, Anne's father, in 1953, she became Anne's posthumous stepsister, a moniker she never sought but used to brilliant effect in 40 years of Holocaust education. The story she eventually recounted was not of Anne's death but of her own survival, after being transported to Birkenau (the part of Auschwitz in which the gas chambers were situated) with her parents and brother in 1944."

Eva Schloss was an 11-year-old newly arrived from Vienna in 1940 who played with children including Anne Frank in the grassy square between their Amsterdam flats after school. Eva and Anne were not close, despite being born a month apart and living as neighbours in Merwedeplein; Eva was athletic while Anne preferred fashion, films and flirting. In 1953 Eva's mother married Otto Frank, making Eva Anne's posthumous stepsister; Eva used that role in forty years of Holocaust education. Eva survived deportation to Birkenau in 1944 with her parents and brother. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Vienna, the family fled after the 1938 Anschluss, moved via Brussels to Amsterdam, were forced to wear the yellow star, acquired false papers, and spent two years hiding in multiple locations before living in an attic flat with a secret compartment.

Read at www.theguardian.com