Eva's Story

April 30, 1989
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.