Anne Frank’s stepsister describes surviving the Holocaust

Editor's note: This video contains images that may be disturbing to some viewers.PARK CITY — We’ve been celebrating our World War II veterans over the past few months by telling their stories as part of the Utah Honor Flight, which sends them on a free trip to see their memorials in Washington, D.C. But what were they up against? What sort of enemy were they facing?

A young Jewish girl by the name of Anne Frank told her story in a diary — a story of hiding from the Nazis during World War II. Anne never survived the Holocaust, which killed more than 6 million Jews, Gypsies, and others deemed “undesirable” by Nazi Germany. Anne’s story has been read by millions worldwide, but Eva Schloss, her childhood friend and stepsister, has a story all her own.

“I remember it very, very clearly,” said Eva, thinking back on her teenage years in the 1940s. “It doesn’t seem long ago to me at all.”

Eva Schloss grew up in Austria, following the First World War. She says Germany was left in a deep depression following its defeat, leaving the country burning with a desire for change.

“And then came a man who promised that he was able to improve things, and he did succeed at first.”

She says Jews became the scapegoat for all of Germany’s problems.

“Suddenly, Hitler pointed out that we are different,” said Eva. “We are not really Germans, we are not really Austrians, and we didn’t fit in the new Germany.”

Eva and her family fled to Holland, but as the Nazis spread across Europe, there was nowhere left to go. They hid in the homes of Dutch families for two years but were eventually betrayed and arrested.

Eva, her brother and her parents were packed on trains with countless others.

“We were just treated as cattle, and we were put in cattle cars.”

Their destination was the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Only 15 years old at the time, what Eva calls the “selection” began immediately. Those deemed healthy enough to work were sent to one side.

“Every child, every older person — you were taken to the wrong side,” said Eva. “Meaning you didn’t enter the camp, you were sent straight to the gas chambers.”

Guards told the prisoners they were being sent to take a shower.

“Otherwise people would have — well, they would have had to go in, but it might not have been so easy. Now people went willingly, sort of. Willingly to their death.”

The bodies were taken to a massive crematorium. It’s estimated that as many as 4,400 were burned every day.

“We were, of course, in shock. In shock. And we couldn’t understand that human beings could do anything like that.”

But many of those who made it through that initial selection faced a fate every bit as horrific.

“We were tattooed, our hair was shaved,” said Eva. “We were housed in bunks, three high, like cages, and 10 people slept in there.”

Open toilets, with no plumbing. “Can you imagine, the bacteria and the stench?”

They had virtually nothing to eat. “Practically all the flesh on my body was gone.”

Disease became rampant. “The water was unclean, so lots of people got typhus, cholera, dysentery, and just died. You lived from day to day. And it happened very often that you woke up in the morning, and the person who slept next to you was gone.”

And, of course, there was the work. One of Eva’s jobs involved sorting.

“Hundreds and hundreds of Jews arrived every day — thousands. And they didn’t have enough people to sort the belongings.”

Belongings of those sent to the gas chambers — piles of shoes, mounds of eyeglasses and endless stacks of clothes.

“Not just sort the clothes, but we had to open the hems, because many, many people brought valuables into the camp — jewelry, money, gold — everything, of course, was taken away, and we had to hand everything over to the Nazis.”

But amid all the death, all the despair, Eva says one of her darkest moments came during an encounter with the infamous Dr. Mengele.

“We had to parade naked in front of him, and the selection was taken place,” said Eva. “And out of the group, he selected about 40 people. And one of them was my mother.”

Known as the “Angel of Death,” Mengele became notorious for his cruel experiments.

“Injecting them with different things, how long they could live and things like that. He did experiments on women, operating without anesthetic, taking out organs, to see how long people could live without it. Terrible experiments.”

But in one of the only bright spots of her time at Auschwitz, Eva’s mother survived — saved by a cousin who worked in the camp’s clinic.

Together, Eva and her mother lived through their time at the camp, lasting until the Russians liberated it, but those months at Auschwitz left scars that would haunt Eva for decades.

“I was a very, very miserable teenager. I hated everybody. We had to suppress it, or we had nightmares — we didn’t open up. We were depressed, miserable people. Forty years. Forty years, I didn’t speak about it. Not to my husband, not to our children.”

Eventually, Eva spoke. And once she started, she couldn’t stop. She dedicated her life to telling her story and wrote three books, including one for children.

“The message for the young people is that we really have to come to terms with changing the world. To accept different religions, different races and different people.”

She says what happened during the Holocaust could happen again. In fact, she says it’s happening right now, as people are killed all over the world because of these differences.

Her challenge to everyone is to remember: to watch footage, to look at photos, to hear the stories of survivors like her.

“We went through it, so people should have the courage to look. It has happened, and people should be able to face it. To help to change this. You can’t hide your head in the sand.”

Eva’s father and brother didn’t survive their time at Auschwitz. Her mother married Anne Frank’s father in 1953. Eva and her husband have three children and live in London.

She visited Auschwitz in 1995 but says she never wants to go back.