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Copyright © 2019 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE — When Holocaust survivor Eva Schloss got out of a Nazi concentration camp at the end of World War II, she didn’t talk about her horrific experience for a long time.

“No one wanted to hear about it. It took me 40 years to start talking about what happened,” she told a sold-out crowd at the Lensic Theater on Sunday afternoon.

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Schloss is known for being the friend and stepsister of Anne Frank, whose diary of her Jewish family’s two years in hiding in Amsterdam became an international bestseller.

Anne’s father, Otto Frank, published his daughter’s diary after the war, during which Anne, her older sister, Margot, and her mother, Edith, perished, as did Schloss’ father and brother. Otto Frank later married Eva Schloss’ mother, Elfreide Geiringer.

Schloss, who is the author of three books, including her autobiography, “Eva’s Story,” has been lecturing on her life and famous stepsister since 1979 and has given more than 1,000 lectures since then.

Her Santa Fe appearance, which was sponsored by the Santa Fe Jewish Center-Chabad and was made possible by such benefactors as Ray Sandoval, raised many philosophical questions. At one point, Schloss told the audience, “God wasn’t there for us” but then referred numerous times to miracles and mitzvahs, the Hebrew word for acts of kindness.

Schloss could not be reached after her appearance at the Lensic. She was mobbed by people who wanted her to autograph copies of “Eva’s Story.”

However, Rabbi Berel Levertov asked Schloss a question about faith on behalf of a reporter. He said that initially Schloss wasn’t able to conceive children because of her time in Auschwitz. “But she went through some treatment and was able to give birth to a daughter and subsequently two more children,” Levertov said in an email. “When she held her first daughter in her hands, that’s when her faith in God was restored.”

Schloss, who is 90, recalled the sense of abandonment she felt as a teenager from a patriarchal Austrian family when she realized that her seemingly powerful father could not save her from state-sponsored torture.

When her family was betrayed and deported to concentration camps, it was her mother who gave her a coat and hat. Schloss believes these items saved her life because they protected her from the cold and also disguised her appearance. It was the first of many “miracles” that she cited in her lecture.

Another miracle was that a cousin who worked for Dr. Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death” who conducted heinous medical experiments on concentration camp inmates, helped Schloss get medication for a case of typhus fever she contracted in Auschwitz. Typhus fever also killed Anne Frank.

While miracles may have saved Schloss’ life, they didn’t save her father and brother.

Despite the well-documented atrocities committed by Russian liberators against German women at the end of World War II, Schloss said that the Russians treated concentration camp survivors with respect. She credited Russia, which she said suffered 30 million casualties in World War II, with providing Holocaust survivors good food served on tables with tablecloths.

“We had been treated like cattle, and suddenly you’re a human being,” said Schloss, who lives in London.

She received enthusiastic applause for her remarks about the “atrocious” treatment of modern-day refugees seeking asylum in the U.S. “These refugees are good people,” Schloss said.

Despite her untiring efforts to speak out against anti-Semitism, Schloss is human. The hagiography of her stepsister in the wake of “The Diary of Anne Frank” rankles a bit. In her lecture, Schloss noted that the Frank family had it relatively “easy” because they never had to “change hiding places,” as the Geiringer family did.

Schloss said she was “not impressed”with her stepsister’s diary, formally known as “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.” As for Frank’s famous quote, “In spite of everything, I still believe people are truly good at heart,” Schloss said that it is often taken out of context.

The full passage reads: “It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”