Anne Frank’s posthumous stepsister speaks at remembrance ceremony
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By Mary Louise Speer | Sunday, May 04, 2008 |
Holocaust survivor, Eva Geiringer Schloss (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)
Holocaust survivor Eva Geiringer Schloss took a short walk Sunday afternoon and breathed in the sights of trees arrayed in tender blossoms.
Later that evening, she shared the stark details of life at Auschwitz death camp during the Yom HaShoah Holocaust Remembrance at the Tri-City Jewish Center, Rock Island. Schloss and her mother survived and were liberated by the Russian forces in January 1945.
“When we were captured and sent to Auschwitz, I was just 15. We had a wonderful family life. I really wanted to experience all this, and I was afraid to die,” she said.
Her family was betrayed by a double agent in the Dutch underground and dispatched to Auschwitz in May 1944. The concentration camp was huge, and people were subjected to a grisly selection process to determine who would go to the gas chambers. Most immediate at risk were children and the elderly, she said. Schloss never knew what day or month it was, and the inmates were stripped of all of possessions, even toilet paper, she said.
Millions of people died in concentration camps — Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, political dissidents and members of targeted religious groups. Schloss recalls meeting Otto Frank, the father of her former playmate, Anne Frank, as the camp was liberated. She anxiously asked him about her father and brother. Had she seen Anne or his other daughter, Margo and wife, Edith, he asked, hoping for a yes.
Tragically, she had to tell him no. Anne, the author of “Diary of a Young Girl,” died in the camp, along with Edith and Margo. Schloss later found out that her father and brother had met the same fate.
“Every survivor that got through, there were a lot of little instances that helped them make it,” she said. Afterward, “I was bitter and full of hate. I hated everyone for many years.”
Otto Frank married her mother in 1953, and he gave Schloss the same loving patience as he did with Anne during the Frank family’s time in hiding in the Secret Annex.
“Otto Frank became the best (step) father. He helped me through it. He didn’t have any hate or bitterness, which was amazing,” she said.
Schloss and her husband live in London, and they are the parents of three daughters and grandparents of five.
“We can share the beauty and the goodness. This is why I talk and travel continuously to tell you, you have one life and you have to live it to the fullest,” she said.
During the Holocaust remembrance, candles were lit in memory of the estimated 6 million Jewish victims, targeted non-Jewish victims and everyone killed by the Nazis. Cantor Gail Posner Karp of Temple Emanuel, Davenport, performed the “Last Butterfly,” a song based on a poem written by a young Holocaust victim, Pavel Friedmann.
The remembrance included a tribute to the Muslim Righteous among the nations. Between 600 to 1,800 Jewish refugees were protected by Albanian Muslims during World War II.
“The lifesaving assistance the Jews received in this predominantly Muslim country was based on Besa, a code of honor which still today serves as the highest ethical code in the country,” Idris Abdul-Hafiz of the Iowa Muslim American Society, said.
Maxine Russman of the Rock Island Regional Office of Education/Holocaust Education Committee of the Greater Quad-City Area, recalls watching a movie about Anne Frank as a young girl. For many people, Anne’s story links them to the realities of the Holocaust.
“I was watching the movie very intently. At that time, movies always had happy endings. I remember ... how stunned I was that it ended as it did,” she said.
Holocaust survivor Eva Geiringer Schloss will speak at 7 p.m. today at Augustana College’s Wallenberg Hall, 7th Avenue, just west of 35th Street. The public is invited.
The city desk can be contacted at (563) 383-2450 or newsroom@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.
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