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Park City • Eva Schloss is not as well-known as her famous stepsister, Anne Frank, but her experience in the Holocaust was no less harrowing.
As a young girl, Schloss faced anti-Semitic discrimination — first in Vienna, then in Amsterdam, where her family fled.
She, her parents and her brother hid for two years in seven Dutch safe houses. They eventually were betrayed by a double-agent nurse.
The 85-year-old survivor recounted her experiences Tuesday night at a special fundraiser organized by Rabbi Yudi Steiger, of Chabad Lubavitch of Park City. More than 400 people crowded into a ballroom at Montage Deer Valley resort hotel to hear her.
Young Eva met Anne Frank in the streets, where the young Jews of Amsterdam played.
"One day a little girl came to me and said, 'My name is Anne Frank,' " Schloss recalled. "She took me up to her apartment, where I met her family."
Anne went to a Montessori school because her father thought she was unusually gifted, Schloss said. "I was a tomboy, but she was more interested in fashion and hairstyles. She was more sophisticated — and she was quite a flirt."
Anne was also a "chatterbox," she said. "Her nickname was 'quack quack.' "
Schloss had no idea that her friend would pen a diary that would become such a remarkable volume, required reading for many schoolkids across the globe.
Anne got the diary on her 13th birthday in 1942, when she was already in hiding, Schloss said. "Many children write beautiful stories but don't become a writer. She might have gone into politics or might have emigrated to Israel."
On Schloss' 15th birthday, she and her family were forcibly taken to a train station and crammed into a cattle car. In it there were two buckets for 80 people: one for water and the other for human waste.
"People fainted; one woman gave birth," she recalled. "It was horrific. We didn't know where we were going,"
At Auschwitz, the prisoners were divided by gender.
Schloss said goodbye to her father for the last time.
"He had tears in his eyes and apologized for not being able to protect us," she said. "I never saw him again."
Schloss' brother and father perished in the camps, just days before the Americans liberated them, as did Otto Frank's wife and two daughters.
Eventually, Otto Frank married Schloss' mother and was her stepfather for 27 years.
Anne Frank's diary was rejected by 20 publishers until Doubleday picked it up. It has now been published in 60 languages.
Schloss lost nearly her entire extended family and was deeply embittered by the experience.
Her stepfather told her, "If you go through life hating people, you will become a miserable human being."
She had trouble accepting his advice but finally regained some reasons for living. She married and had three children and now has five grandchildren.
Schloss has written three books. "Eva's Story" about her wartime experiences, was published in 1988. In 2005, she followed that with "The Promise," aimed at younger readers, telling the story of her brother, Heinz. And, last year, she wrote her third volume, "After Auschwitz."
Through the horrors of the Holocaust, she lost faith in God and in humanity, Schloss said, but not her heritage.
"I am a very proud Jew," Schloss said in an interview before her lecture. "If I would give up my Jewishness, I would have betrayed not only my family but Judaism in general."
She holds no grudges against Germany but feels an urgency to spread tolerance and love by sharing her experience.
"We need to stick together," she said, "and change the world."
The audience responded with a quiet, reverential standing ovation.
Though Schloss has been to the U.S. many times, it was her first trip to Utah.
She spoke in perfect English, having lived in England since 1951, but with a slight German accent. She sat on a platform while Rabbi Benny Zippel, of Bais Menachem in Salt Lake City — whose mother is a Holocaust survivor in Italy — and Amy Roberts, of The Park Record, posed questions to prompt her memories.