Eva Schloss MBE, step-sister of Anne Frank and Honorary President of the Anne Frank Trust UK and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall meet
(Picture: Getty Images)The Duchess of Cornwall called on all generations not to “be bystanders to any kind of injustice or prejudice” as she spent Holocaust Memorial Day with Anne Frank’s stepsister.
Speaking at the annual Anne Frank Lunch, Camilla asked for a commitment to “tackle hatred in any of its terrible forms”.
The duchess lit a candle in memory of victims of the Holocaust, alongside Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the 92-year-old stepsister of the diarist. She said: “I first read Anne Frank’s diary when I was in my teens. The freshness and vitality of her writing drew me into what I felt was friendship with her.
“But Anne’s story is one of six million. Six million stories that need to be told, heard, and remembered to honour those lives that were lost; and to warn us of the consequences of extreme hatred. Anne continues to inspire a worldwide movement of anti-prejudice education, including the Anne Frank Trust here in the UK.”
She added: “Let us not be bystanders to any kind of injustice or prejudice. Let us learn from those who bore witness to the horrors of the Holocaust, and of all subsequent genocides, and commit ourselves to keeping their stories alive, so that each new generation will be ready to tackle hatred in any of its terrible forms.”
Camilla recalled how in January 2020 she visited Auschwitz on the 75th anniversary of its liberation. “I will never forget the speech given on that occasion by a survivor of the camp, Marian Turski.”
He spoke of the encroaching laws that discriminated against the Jewish people throughout the Thirties in Nazi Germany… Marian warned us that this can happen again.”
Anne Frank wrote her diary aged 13 to 15 while hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam.
Together with her family and four other Jewish refugees, she hid for over two years in a secret apartment above her father’s workplace.
In August 1944, the hiding place was discovered by the Nazis and all the inhabitants deported to concentration camps where Anne was murdered.
Ms Schloss, whose mother was the second wife of Otto Frank, Anne’s father, said: “It was an honour to be with the Duchess of Cornwall in remembering all those, including my father and brother, who were murdered by the Nazis just for being Jewish.”
This week a six-year investigation into the death of Anne named a suspect who “very likely” gave her family up to the Nazis. A team of about 20 historians, criminologists and data specialists believe a relatively unknown figure, Jewish notary Arnold van den Bergh, gave them up in order to save his own family.
