Eva's Story: A Survivor's Tale by the Step-Sister of Anne Frank

Eva Schloss and Evelyn Julia Kent --This text refers to the paperback edition. From Library Journal Almost 50 years now separate the children of today from the generation of Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust. Perhaps this is one factor that compelled two women, both now grandmothers, to record the painful years they spent as young girls in the death camps of Poland. Libraries probably will find more demand for Eva's Story , since Schloss is the posthumous stepsister of Anne Frank, whom she knew in Amsterdam. With her family she was able to rely on a network of Dutch Gentiles to hide her through the first years of World War II. On her 15th birthday, however, informers betrayed her, her mother, father, and sister. Deported to Auschwitz, she survived thanks to a combination of luck and the fierce love she and her mother shared. Graf, a Polish Jew, was a university student when the German invasion shattered her world. She survived the first years of the German occupation by fleeing to Soviet-occupied sections of Poland. But, like Schloss, her luck ran out. Her camp, Plaszow, equaled Auschwitz in terrors. Again, like Schloss, Graf relied upon the deep affection and support of her sisters to survive. Both books are recommended for their demonstration that courage, familial love, and an inner resistance still flourished even in the deepest horrors of the Holocaust. - Ann H. Sullivan, Tompkins Cortland Community Coll. Lib., Dryden, N.Y. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the paperback edition. On Holocaust Day 2015, on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Eva Schloss is interviewed on BBC World. Click the link below to hear her moving story. "A patently honest account of the struggle of a courageous and resourceful young woman to surivive in a nightmare world" -- Jewish Chronicle "High on the list of Holocaust reading" -- Jewish Telegraph "A tale worth telling ... it picks up where Anne Frank's diary ends" -- New York Daily News "Powerful, a heart-breaking and inspirational account of personal triumph" -- Publisher's Weekly --This text refers to the paperback edition. From Publishers Weekly In 1944, on her 15th birthday, Schloss, a childhood playmate of famed diarist Anne Frank, was captured by the Nazis in her Amsterdam hiding-place and sent, with her mother, to Birkenau concentration camp in Poland; both miraculously survived, though Schloss's father and brother, imprisoned in nearby Auschwitz, did not. After the war, Eva's mother, Fritzi Geiringer, married Anne Frank's father, Otto (making Schloss the posthumous stepsister of Anne Frank, as the subtitle indicates). This heartbreaking and inspirational account of personal triumph over genocidal madmen, with its graphic portrayal of the hell of Nazism, is told with incredible modesty made even more powerful by an unembellished and understated writing style. Schloss's harrowing testament includes her encounter with Dr. Joseph Mengele, who nearly selected her for his sadistic experiments, and her mother's recollections of the family's ordeal. Photos. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the paperback edition. Read more