An interview with Eva Schloss

On Tuesday 15 March 2016 Eva Schloss was on stage at the Chandos Road Building to talk about her life. Meg Pettit (English MA student and the University’s Publicity Assistant) met her beforehand for an interview.

When the Buckingham Advertiser ran a story that holocaust-survivor Eva Schloss would be visiting the University the demand for tickets was unprecedented. Although her husband was in hospital, Eva nonetheless ensured her talk was delivered.

Anne Frank was one of Eva’s childhood friends and has been labelled by the media as her step-sister. However, Eva has stated in interviews that she dislikes this description. She has described Anne as a vivacious and talkative young girl whose friends gave her the nickname ‘Mrs Quack Quack’. Otto Frank married Eva’s mother in 1953, nearly a decade after his daughter Anne died in Belsen concentration camp.

At the opening of the 1986 Anne Frank Exhibition in London, Ken Livingstone asked Eva to speak about her life. Though Eva admits at the time she wanted to ‘hide under the table’ the event ‘changed her life’. She had previously not spoken of her experiences openly and had maintained her silence for forty years. The response to Eva’s talk opened the floodgates and allowed her to better appreciate how crucially important her personal ‘warning from history’ is. She has subsequently spoken publicly many times about her experiences.

Eva Schloss has shown remarkable patience down the years when repeatedly asked the same questions about life in Auschwitz. All of these responses are widely available in her books, the media and online. This interview therefore deliberately avoids asking those same questions and instead concentrates on her cultural and political views and how her experiences relate directly to her opinions.

You have lived in 4 major cities: Vienna, Brussels, Amsterdam and London. What attracts you to life in European capital cities?

I was born in Vienna, it is my home city. It suited me because I was very sporty and in the winter we went skiing, as it was only 20 minutes from our home and in the summer we went to the mountains. It is a beautiful city, with culture and music and I loved it.

Brussels, at the time, in ’38-’39 was a very depressing, miserable town and I was very unhappy. I had to learn French – I couldn’t speak anything and was a refugee and not welcome, so I have very bad memories of Brussels.

Amsterdam was much more friendly and people said I looked like a real Dutch girl, with blue eyes and blonde hair and a bicycle. I was very happy there, but only very shortly as the Nazis invaded that country.

After the war I hated Amsterdam, I wanted to leave, and went to London for a year. That was in ’51, when there was food-rationing still and a lot of bomb damage. Very poor really, no restaurants, nothing – and I was quite shocked. In Vienna we’d had central heating, but in London you still had open fires, you were freezing to death. The smog you could almost die from and you could lose your way completely, so it was very unpleasant actually.

But nevertheless it was unoccupied in the war and won the war, and there was an optimistic atmosphere. I met my husband there and now it is the most beautiful city in the world.

I am aware that after the war you studied Art History at the University of Amsterdam. You may be familiar with the 2013 story of German art collector Cornelius Gurlitt who was discovered to have hoarded over a thousand priceless paintings (inherited from his father) most of which were seized from Jewish owners who later died in Auschwitz. A German court ruled that these paintings were legally acquired and sent the collection to a Swiss gallery.

Given the very dubious provenance of these artworks, will it ever be possible for the Jewish community to accept a decision of this nature?

Not really. But unfortunately most of the owners of the pictures have not survived. The children often didn’t know exactly and some of the children who were young people haven’t survived. A lot of it is property which really doesn’t belong to anybody any more.

There is this film now about ‘The Lady in Gold’, a Klimt, where there was a court case and the Austrians said: “No, we can’t imagine Austria without it, it’s ours” and the court case was lost. But if the owners are there, it has to be returned, really.

This year the copyright expired on Mein Kampf and copies were released in Germany. The Times of Israel has described this republication as a “slap in the face”, however some see this fascist manifesto as a frightening warning from history that needs to be seen in order to be contradicted and dismissed. Will it ever prove possible to reconcile this warning from history with the understandable outrage felt by Holocaust survivors?

I haven’t thought about this question. [Laughs.] Personally, with books I think people can voice whatever they want to tell and we have to make our own judgement. Personally it doesn’t offend me. I think we can learn from it.

In 1929 he started to write this book in prison and I think it can warn us that if we see anyone coming up with writing like that. The trouble was no one took him seriously. Nobody took any notice but we have to take notice.

A good example now would be Donald Trump: prejudice, building walls. And Hitler, before he was in power did not say all he was going to do, but Trump is saying now what he will do. God knows what he will do when he should become President. It is definitely a great danger for the future. America is still one of the most influential and richest countries in the world, and with such a leader God knows what he will do. We should be aware, but unfortunately most of the Americans don’t seem to see that.

Are you surprised at his continuing success in the running for the Republican nomination, considering this?

Very. Very surprised. I think the Republicans themselves are surprised. But it shows you that people are dissatisfied and they are looking for something else. They think perhaps he will bring something new and perhaps it will change. But this is a general atmosphere in the whole world. People want change, people want something else.

And that’s why Bernie Sanders as well is so popular with the young people because he has new ideas, he goes against the establishment, but I don’t think he has as much chance. To mention ‘socialism’ in America is a failure from the start.

You have previously encouraged young people to take an active part in politics. Did it bother you in 2015 when Russell Brand encouraged people to avoid voting, insisting that in the end it “made no difference”?

Yes, I think all young people should be active and take an interest when growing up. I used to say (fifteen years ago) “demonstrate, know your opinion”. But demonstration is not something which is allowed now very often. Peaceful demonstrators get water cannons on them, tear gas, even shot dead or beaten up and arrested, which should not be allowed. Demonstrating, if it is peaceful – people have a right to do that.

You have stated that your book After Auschwitz is a ‘letter for the future’. The current European refugee crisis has prompted an upswing in right-wing politics in some countries. What would you suggest as a solution to this seemingly insoluble problem?

I know it might not be very popular, but since I have talked about it it’s happening a little: the only chance of peace is if America and Russia work together and not hate each other so much. The hate of America against the Russians is just unbelievable. Whatever the Russians do, they say it’s wrong and they work against it and we will never get a solution.

The refugee problem can only be solved with peace, so then the people will not want to leave their own country. To be a refugee is a terrible thing. Those people who do become refugees must be really desperate, as you don’t leave your own country, your own family, your own home if you are not really in danger – for your life and for your family. Those people have run for their lives under terrible circumstances and the world must help them.

With the explosion of convenience as standard in the 21^st Century, do you think a café at Auschwitz is a step too far and seems disrespectful, or should the site be allowed to profit from such a venture to sustain itself and allow profits to go towards maintaining the site?

I have been three times to Auschwitz – in ’95 I visited for the first time with a Dutch programme and then there was still a lot to be seen. I went with the Germans last year for the 70^th anniversary – and it was still okay, the atmosphere. But I went now with the Japanese for a documentary television programme and then people were photographing all the time and laughing. At Birkenau, the women’s camp where I was, there was practically nothing anymore, just a huge, empty space. The size is still impressive and there are one or two barracks where you can see how it was, but it wasn’t built to last.

It is a problem to keep it going.

But now there are bus tours all the time and it has become a tourist thing. They call it a museum, rather than ‘the concentration death camp’, which is what is was.

There were three hundred camps, but now Auschwitz is the only one where there is relatively much to be seen. In most of the camps there is nothing to see anymore, just a museum.

They had wanted to pull it down and put a supermarket there…

But now they have a luxury hotel near there, Carrefour (the big French luxury supermarkets) there and it’s now a big town and a tourist town. And thousands of people come from all over the world daily. It’s off-putting but on the other hand if you want people to go there you have to accommodate for it. It’s a difficult choice to make.

Was it strange going to see your own life experiences portrayed on stage in the play ‘And then they came for me’?

Well, you know a lot about me. [Laughs.] The first times I saw the play I was in tears from beginning to end. But you get hardened to it, you get used to it.

Many of your brother’s paintings which there are photos of on your website are very vibrant and seem quite optimistic…

They were not all optimistic. Some are beautiful. There is one which is a beautiful picture where he imagines he’s a farm worker, he comes in to see bread and beer, but his mother has died in the alcove and he breaks down and cries. Some are very emotional. And then he wrote many poems, over 200, but most of them are somehow about death.

He was very much afraid of dying, which makes it even worse to think how he must have perished.

What is your opinion of the work of Mel Brooks? I ask because I remember my grandmother referencing The Producers as one of her favourite pieces of work. She abhorred anti-Semitism, but saw Brooks’ work as an antidote to Nazism; a puncturing of the myth.

I can’t remember that work, but Life Is Beautiful, an Italian film – I was shocked about that. I bet you’ve heard of The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas. There is so much truth known about what happened and to write books or make films about things which are not true, or which is a parody, or exaggerated, or completely imagined – that I don’t think should be allowed. They give the wrong impression. In The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, the boy plays chess under the barbed wire fence – I mean it’s completely rubbish! And a Jewish doctor serves at a table where there are Nazis having a dinner party in a striped uniform, which was probably full of lice. It’s idiotic. They wouldn’t touch us with a barge pole, they certainly would not let us in their homes or at a party, and it’s so ridiculous.

Thanks for your time, it is greatly appreciated.

A very good interview, as you’ve asked me questions nobody’s asked me. Very political, and I like to talk about politics. It is very important.

Mrs Schloss has written three books, Eva’s Story (1988), The Promise (2006) and After Auschwitz (2013) which are available at most good booksellers and online.