Anne Frank’s stepsister’s lecture on Holocaust and xenophobia

This video from the USA says about itself:

Jewish Survivor Eva Schloss Testimony Part 1

4 April 2012

You are watching Eva Schloss, a Jewish Survivor from the Holocaust. To learn more about Eva and explore the stories of other Holocaust survivors and witnesses, visit http://vhaonline.usc.edu.

These videos are brought to you by the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, which was founded by Steven Spielberg in 1994. The Institute has video testimonies of 52,000 Holocaust survivors, witnesses, liberators, and others. Each individual’s video testimony was indexed with the specific terms, names, places, and dates applied to noted in each minute of video.

This video is the sequel.

From De Balie in Amsterdam, the Netherlands:

‘I blame the world for the Holocaust. I blame the world for the refugee crisis.’

Eva Schloss

The 18th Freedom Lecture will be by the 88-year-old Eva Schloss. In 1938, Eva’s family emigrated to Amsterdam, after the annexation of Austria by the Nazis. In Amsterdam, Eva meets Anne Frank, who happens to live on the other side of the street. In 1944, before their deportation to Auschwitz, Eva and her family are imprisoned in a detention center located on the Max Euweplein. Next to the former district court, now known as De Balie. Eva Schloss survives Auschwitz, and did not speak about the horrors she experienced for forty years. After the war, Eva’s mother married Otto Frank, Anne Frank‘s father. So Anne Frank is Eva’s step sister. Eva Schloss lectures almost every day, in that she relates her own history to current events, and speaks out against racism and xenophobia in the Western world.

In June, Eva will return to De Balie, to reflect in this emotionally loaded place on her life and current events during her Freedom Lecture.

After the lecture, we will have a conversation with author, columnist and trainer Babah Tarawally and architect Arna Mackic about the ways in which their personal refugee story recurs in their work. How do they relate to the past, and in which ways do they feel a certain responsibility to speak out publicly against issues such as racism and xenophobia? And what are the differences between the situation for refugees then and now?

Actress and film maker Martha van der Bly currently works on a documentary about the impressive story of the life of Eva Schloss, Eva’s Mission, and will give an introduction.

The evening will end with the performance ‘One in a Million’ by the Syrian dancer Ahmad Joudeh, who became famous after the documentary about his life, ‘Dance or Die’. In the performance, Ahmad shows that freedom is not self-evident for so many people around the world. With ‘One in a Million, Ahmad does not only tell us his own personal story, but the story of millions of people. The performance is accompanied by music of the German composer Max Richter.

About Eva Schloss

Eva Schloss has regularly spoken about the Holocaust at educational institutions since 1985. For her dedication to this work, Northumbria University awarded her an honorary doctorate in Civil Law. Also, she has become a Trustee of the Anne Frank Educational Trust in the UK. The positive as well as the negative influence that the story of Anne Frank has had on Eva’s live, is described in Eva’s autobiography After Auschwitz (2014).

This programme is a cooperation between De Balie and Martha van der Bly. Please find more information on the film Eva’s Mission here.

Language: English