On June 12, 1942, Anne Frank was given a diary for her thirteenth

birthday. Less than a month later, she and her family went into

hiding from the Nazis. The story of Eva Schloss Geiringer may

not be as well-known as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. Through a

chance meeting with a passionate New Jersey college educator, however, Eva’s

amazing life of sacrifice, survival, and strength is finally gaining the recognition

it deserves.

On a train to Auschwitz, fifteen-year-old Eva made a promise to her

brother, Heinz Geiringer. If he did not survive the camps, Eva promised to

retrieve the paintings and poetry Heinz hid under the floorboards of his attic

hiding place. The film Eva’s Promise, an important addition to the annals of

Jewish Holocaust history, introduces its audiences to Heinz, his artistry, and

Eva’s efforts to find and share her brother’s remarkable legacy.

Heinz Geiringer and Eva Geiringer Schloss’s Holocaust story is chillingly

parallel to that of their classmates, Margot and Anne Frank. Faced with Hitler’s

rise, Erich, Elfriede (“Fritzi”), and their two children, fled from their home and

comfortable life in Vienna, Austria, and settled in the Netherlands, hoping

its history of neutrality would provide a safe haven. Their worst fears came to

pass when Germany invaded Holland.

“As of 15 May 1940, we were living under Nazi occupation, and we had

nowhere else to go,” Eva recalled in her 2013 memoir After Auschwitz: A Story

of Heartbreak and Survival by the Stepsister of Anne Frank. Soon after, the Nazis

implemented the increasingly harsh measures against the Jews that were part

of their Final Solution. In May 1942, Heinz received orders to report for a

deportation to a Germany factory. That evening, the family went into hiding.

As no place was large enough for four people, they were forced to split up. Erich

and Heinz in one apartment; Fritzi and Eva in another. For Eva, her time was

to be “a mixture of two emotions, utter terror and mind-numbing boredom.”

161Remembrance and Legacy A Sister’s Promise Fulfilled: Eva Geiringer Schloss

Meanwhile, Heinz, having to give up his musical interests, spent his time

painting and writing poetry. “I could hardly believe the detailed and impressive

oil paintings that he showed me,” said Eva, recalling the furtive visits she and

Fritzi made to the men’s apartment. “In one, a young man, like himself, was

leaning his head on the desk in despair. In another, a sailing boat was crossing

the ocean in front of a shuttered window.”

On May 11, 1944, Eva’s fifteenth birthday, the Geiringer family was

captured after being betrayed by a double agent in the Dutch underground.

A train took them on an arduous three-day trip across Europe, in what would

be the last time they would be together as a family.

During their ride, Heinz made Eva promise that if he didn’t survive, she

would retrieve the paintings he had stashed under the floorboards of the house

where he and his father had hidden them. “Please, Eva, please,” Heinz told his

sister. “Go and pick it up and show to the world what I achieved in my short

life.” Eva grudgingly agreed.

When the trains reached the concentration camps, Erich and Heinz

were sent to Auschwitz; Fritzi and Eva, to Birkenau. Through sheer luck and

resourcefulness, Eva and Fritzi survived but were barely alive when Soviet

troops freed them in 1945. “I never gave up hope, or the determination that I

would outlast the Nazis and go on to live the full life that I and all victims of

the Holocaust deserved,” Eva said.

Tragically, Heinz and Erich perished in Ebensee, a subcamp of Mauthausen

following the forced march from Auschwitz that came just before the war

ended. The two women eventually returned to Amsterdam and settled into

their family’s apartment, which had remained untouched.

After the war, Otto Frank, their old neighbor, the only surviving member

of his family and his “Annex” companions, took comfort in visits with Fritzi

and Eva. In 1953, Eva became the posthumous stepsister of Anne Frank when

Otto and Fritzi were married. The couple dedicated the rest of their lives to the

publication and promotion of what would be the world’s most famous diary.

In the meantime, Fritzi and Eva had retrieved Heinz’s work, which included

paintings, a sketchbook, and poems, from his and Erich’s last hiding place. For

many years, Eva and her mother kept the paintings and poems in the family.

Eva eventually moved to London, where she married Zvi Schloss, a German

refugee, raised their three daughters, ran a successful antique store, and quietly

moved on with her life despite her recurring nightmares. It was a few years after

Otto Frank passed away in 1980 that Eva, now in her late fifties, began publicly

sharing her wartime experiences in person and through her memoir, Eva’s

Story: A Survivor’s Tale by the Stepsister of Anne Frank (1988). “As soon as I

started talking, I became calmer and didn’t have nightmares anymore,” she said

in her film Eva’s Promise. During one of her talks in Philadelphia, she shared

Heinz’s work for the first time.

A chance meeting with Susan Kerner led Eva to further expand her audi-

ence. In 1994, Kerner, the education director at the George Street Playhouse

in New Brunswick, New Jersey, directed a production of The Diary of Anne

Frank. Kerner reached out to Ed Silverberg, a friend of Anne Frank’s who

had survived the war by successfully hiding, to talk to the cast about life in

Amsterdam after the invasion.

Around the same time, Young Audiences of NJ reached out to Kerner with

a request to work with a playwright to create a play about Anne Frank to tour

schools. The Anne Frank Center in NYC suggested they create a piece about

two hidden children who survived the Holocaust who had a connection with

the now-famous German author.

“I already knew Ed,” recounted Kerner in a 2023 article in the Jewish

Standard Times of Israel. I wanted a woman, and I wanted her to be a camp

survivor.” They put her in touch with Eva Schloss. George Street Playhouse

commissioned playwright James Still to write the play. The final product, And

Then They Came For Me: Remembering the World of Anne Frank, is a gripping

multimedia experience, which combines videotaped interviews with the two

survivors playing behind the actors who portrayed scenes from their lives.

162 163Remembrance and Legacy A Sister’s Promise Fulfilled: Eva Geiringer Schloss

Thirty years later, the play continues to tour around the world.

A lifelong friendship developed between Eva and Kerner, who met peri-

odically. As the success of the play grew, Schloss sold her antique shop and

became a full-time Holocaust educator, traveling in Europe, Asia, and the

United States and participating in talkbacks following performances of the

play in many countries.

More importantly, Eva came to grips with the unfulfilled promise she had

made to her older brother. In 2006, over sixty years after the Holocaust, Eva

gave Heinz’s works to the newly established Het Verzetsmuseum, the Dutch

Resistance Museum in Amsterdam. Soon after, she published her second

memoir, The Promise (2006), followed by her final memoir, After Auschwitz

(2013). She now focused her efforts on preserving Heinz’s’ legacy. “It became

my task that people would remember who he was … and what he achieved,”

Eva said.

As the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world, Eva realized that she

wanted to do even more to preserve Heinz’s legacy. She reached out to Kerner,

who suggested a documentary film. Kerner recruited Steve McCarthy, her

Montclair State University colleague and an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker,

to direct and coproduce what would become Eva’s Promise. Eva had only two

requests: “Get it done. And hurry.”

Despite the pandemic, the team, which now included McCarthy’s two

sons, flew to London to tape twelve hours of interviews with Schloss. They also

interviewed the staff of the Amsterdam museum that houses Heinz’s work.

The film was completed in 2022.

Kerner and McCarthy worked tirelessly and without pay to produce

the film. Screenings took place across the United States, including a show-

ing at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley,

California. Kerner hopes that the documentary can be used as an educational

tool to counteract the recent dramatic rise of antisemitism as a result of the

Gaza–Israeli War. In 2024, she and McCarthy tested the film in a school with

eleven- to thirteen-year-old children. “The kids were very engaged and had

lots of thoughtful comments and questions,” said Kerner.

Beginning in 2024, Eve’s Promise has been presented on 17 PBS stations.

The film has been screened in film festivals, museums, JCCs, synagogues, and

theaters. Several colleges have included it in course curricula, and the film is

beginning to get adopted in secondary schools. Eva’s Promise was presented

at an Anne Frank exhibit in Columbus, Ohio, in February 2025. The Heinz

Geiringer story, including his poems and paintings, will be featured in an

upcoming New York State Holocaust resource guide along with a clip of the

film. Kerner envisions the resource guide will lead to greater national and even

international exposure.

Until recently, Eva continued her active involvement in Holocaust educa-

tion and advocacy. She has spoken around the world, with a special place in her

heart for her meetings with schoolchildren. She was part of the 2018 campaign

to convince Mark Zuckerberg to ban Holocaust deniers from Facebook,

and she is prominently featured in the Ken Burns 2022 documentary, The

U.S. and the Holocaust. In January 2023, Eva attended the screening of Eva’s

Promise at JW3, a Jewish community center in London. Now nearing her

ninety-sixth birthday, she has stepped back to rest and is enjoying time with

her first great-grandchild. Her grandson Eric, who is featured in the film, now

shares her work.

Before they were forced into hiding, Eva’s father Erich gave his children

the following advice: “I promise you this, everything you do leaves something

behind; nothing gets lost. All the good you have accomplished will continue in

the lives of the people you have touched. It will make a difference to someone,

somewhere, sometime, and your achievements will be carried on.”

Through her books, her films, and her tireless work in Holocaust educa-

tion and advocacy, Eva Schloss has not only kept her promise to her brother

Heinz but also has made the memory of the six million and all who have been

subjected to hatred a blessing and an inspiration.