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King Charles released a statement following the death of Eva Schloss at age 96
Schloss was Anne Frank's stepsister and a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp
The King and Queen Camilla both met Schloss, a dedicated educator of the Holocaust, in recent years
King Charlessent a personal message following the death of Anne Frank's stepsister, Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss.
On Jan. 4, the Anne Frank Houseannouncedthat Schloss died on Jan. 3 at age 96. Following that announcement on Sunday, the King, 77, honored her in a moving tribute on behalf of himself and his wife,Queen Camilla.
"My wife and I are greatly saddened to hear of the death of Eva Schloss," King Charles' statement began.
"The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend, and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding and resilience through her tireless work for the Anne Frank Trust U.K. and for Holocaust education across the world," he continued.
A message from The King following the death of Auschwitz survivor, Eva Schloss.Eva was Anne Frank's step-sister, and co-Founder and Honorary President of the@AnneFrankTrust, of which The Queen is Patron. The Trust works to empower young people to challenge prejudice.pic.twitter.com/8HEC8lrtYp
— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily)January 4, 2026
"We are both privileged and proud to have known her, and we admired her deeply. May her memory be a blessing to us all," the sovereign said.
The King signed the message "Charles R," using hisregnal signatureas King. The "R" is shorthand for "Rex," or Latin for "King."
King Charles and Queen Camilla, 78, both met Schloss previously. The Kingdanced the Hora with her at a Hanukkah partyfor Holocaust survivors at a Jewish community center in North London in December 2022, and the Queen spent time with her earlier that year in connection with their joint support for the Anne Frank Trust.
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Queen Camilla and Schloss connected in January 2022 at a reception hosted by the Anne Frank Trust to commemorate Holocaust Memorial and the 75th anniversary of the publication of Anne Frank's diary.
Queen Camilla was then known as the Duchess of Cornwall (as it was prior to King Charles' accession to the throne in September 2022), and she was later announced as the first Royal Patron of the Anne Frank Trust U.K. in January 2024.
Schloss was the co-founder and Honorary President of the Anne Frank Trust U.K., which was established in 1990 to empower young people between the ages of 9 and 15 to challenge all forms of prejudice through learning from Anne Frank and the Holocaust.
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Schloss' stepsister Anne and the Frank family hid in a secret annex in Amsterdam for two years during World War II to evade Nazi persecution for their Jewish faith. Anne was a teenager at the time, and her diary of their life in hiding was later published asAnne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.
The Frank family and the others they hid with were later found, and Anne died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at age 15. Her father, Otto Frank, fulfilled her wish of becoming a writer by posthumously publishing her diary, which has since been translated into 70 languages and is popularly taught in schools.
Schloss was born in Austria in 1929, the same year as Anne, and became a neighbor of the Frank family when her family moved to Amsterdam to escape Nazi persecution.
Schloss and Anne often played together, according to theAnne Frank Trust U.K., and their families went into hiding on the same day in 1942.
The Schloss family was betrayed and sent to concentration camps in 1944. Her father and brother were murdered, and Eva and her mother, Elfriede Geiringer, survived Auschwitz.
Elfriede married Otto Frank in 1953, and Eva became a dedicated educator of the Holocaust. She wrote three books,Eva's Story,After AuschwitzandThe Promise, and co-founded the Anne Frank Trust U.K. to further this work.
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In 2024, Anne Frank Trust U.K. worked with over 132,000 youth through its Schools Program and reached another 45,500 young people by educating 5,300 Peer Educators.
In a statement that year, Eva said, "We must never forget the terrible consequences of treating people as 'other.' We need to respect everybody's races and religions. We need to live together with our differences. The only way to achieve this is through education, and the younger we start, the better."
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