Eva's Story (22 page)

We were taken to the Central Station and we all hugged and kissed each other goodbye. We promised Rootje and Kea we would keep in touch, but at that moment we could only think about finding out what had happened to our own families.

13 June 1945

At the station city officials took our names and asked where we wanted to go. We had no family in Holland so we felt we should contact friends who might give us shelter for the night until we got our bearings. We thought of Martin and Rosi Rosenbaum. Although he was Jewish, since she was an Austrian Christian it was just possible they were still living in Amsterdam. We were given money for a taxi fare to their home.

Martin opened the door and recognized us immediately.

‘Fritzi Geiringer!' he beamed, embracing first Mutti and then me.

He welcomed us in and said of course we could stay. Then he told us the most extraordinary news. Rosi had just given birth to a son. Who could have imagined it? That seemed to me the greatest miracle of all. Against all the odds, and amid the deprivations and agony of war, a new life had been created. The baby was just three days old and mother and child were still in hospital.

We visited her that evening. Rosi was very proud of her son and as amazed at his birth as we were, but she was not feeling very well. She agreed with Martin that Mutti should stay and help look after her and the baby when they came home.

It was a time of austerity. The trees in the streets had been chopped down for fuel and many wooden doors were missing. There was no gas supply so we could not use the cooker and had to find fuel for the small woodburning stove. There was precious little to eat. We decided to contact the Reitsmas who had the keys to the secret store of food we had built up before we went into hiding.

They were overjoyed to see us again. Like Martin and Rosi they had not been deported by the Germans and had survived the hardships of the war. Our secret store of food had saved them in times of near starvation but now unfortunately there was nothing left. Their son, Floris, had remained in hiding throughout the occupation and had now enrolled at the University of Amsterdam. Both of them looked elderly and frail but Mrs Reitsma was excited because she had just been commissioned by the Dutch government to design the postage stamps to commemorate the liberation. She showed us the copper etchings she was working on and promised to give me art lessons when we were settled again.

The day after Rosi returned home with her baby, I heard a knock at the front door and found Otto Frank standing there. His grey suit hung loose on his tall, thin frame, but he looked calm and distinguished.

‘We have a visitor,' I said as I took him in to see Mutti.

He held out his hand to be introduced to Mutti.

‘But we've met already,' she said. ‘On the way to Czernowitz.'

He shook his head. His brown eyes were deep-set and sad.

‘I don't remember,' he said. ‘I have your address from the list of survivors. I am trying to trace what has happened to Margot and Anne.'

He was desolated that he had not yet found them but he sat and spoke to Mutti for a long time, building up her confidence. She told him she was anxious about Heinz and Pappy and that she was trying to get our apartment back. Other tenants were living in 46 Merwedeplein but it was still leased in the name of a non-Jewish friend. He said he was staying with Miep Gies and her husband – who had helped to hide the Franks during the war – near the Merwedeplein and would be happy to help in any way if we needed him.

We remained with the Rosenbaums until early July before we could regain possession of our flat. It felt so eerie to walk up the stairs. Inside it was as if the intervening years had not taken place. It was like stepping back in time – everything looked exactly the same. I wandered in and out of the rooms. Our furniture was in the same place, the curtaining and paintwork was unchanged, and when I looked for the spot on my bedroom wall where Pappy had marked my height it was still there.

I went to the window and looked down into the square. Some children were playing at one end on the tarmac. Later I heard a taxi draw up in the street below and ran to open the door thinking,
That's Pappy coming home with Heinz
. But it was only a neighbour from across the hall.

Otto Frank visited us from time to time. Mutti was concerned about what to do with me. Should I go to school again or learn a profession? He advised her strongly to send me back to finish my studies at school.

The nightmares started at the end of July. I would wake up screaming. Once I woke up to see Mutti standing by my bed in her dressing gown holding a glass of water for me.

‘I can't sleep, Mutti,' I said.

‘I understand,' she said, handing me the glass and sitting on my bed.

‘When will Pappy come home?' I asked.

‘Tomorrow maybe,' she said, stroking my hair and kissing my forehead. Then she tucked me in under my precious quilt and waited on Heinz's bed until I fell asleep.

After matriculating with distinction from the Amsterdam Lyceum, I was persuaded by my mother and Otto Frank to take up photography, and in 1949 I worked as an apprentice in a photographic studio in Amsterdam. But I found it difficult to settle down after my experiences and I decided to leave Holland for a while.

Otto arranged for me to work in London in a large photo-studio in Woburn Square which belonged to an old friend of his. I stayed in a boarding house where I met Zvi Schloss, an economics student from Israel who was working for a stockbroking firm while completing his studies. We were married in Amsterdam in 1952 and Otto was a witness at our wedding.

We set up home in England where our three daughters were born. Caroline (who was born in 1956) is a London lawyer, Jacky (born in 1958) is a beautician; she is married to Dag Hovelson, a Norwegian, and they live in London with their baby daughter, Lisa (born in 1985). Sylvia, our youngest daughter (born in 1962), also lives in London and works as a journalist.

I continued working as a freelance photographer until 1972 and then I started an antiques business which I still run in north-west London.

Fritzi (Mutti)
married Otto in 1953 (making me the posthumous step-sister of Anne Frank) and left Holland for Basle, Switzerland, to join Otto's mother, sister and brother who had remained there during the war. She worked with Otto on the vast correspondence involved in the publication of Anne's
Diary
, but she visited me frequently in England – and still does. Otto came to regard my three girls as his grandchildren. Mutti and Otto shared twenty-seven happily married years until Otto's death in 1980.

Mutti's mother and father (my grandparents) died in England, her father in 1952 and her mother in 1968. My aunt Sylvia (Mutti's sister) died of cancer in 1977, grieving for her youngest son, Jimmy, who was born in England and who died from a brain haemorrhage after a rugby match at the age of twenty-five.

Minni
, our cousin who had saved Mutti's life and supported us with her strength and kindness in the hospital block in Birkenau, miraculously survived the death march out of the camp and returned to Prague after the war. Her two teenage sons, Peter and Stephan, had been taken by her sister to Palestine before the war and she rejoined them there in 1947. She spent many active years caring for new immigrants and the elderly. Her younger son Stephan was killed at the age of twenty, fighting in the 1948 War of Independence. She grieved for him until her death in 1984.

Franzi
also survived and was liberated in Germany by the Americans. She had contracted tuberculosis and after repatriation to Holland was bedridden for several years under the constant care of devoted friends and her sister, Irene. She finally made a complete recovery and she lives today in Israel with Irene. She, Mutti and I visit each other frequently.

Rootje
lost her husband and, despite finding her daughter Judy, she never entirely recovered from her experiences and frequently suffered from depression. She died in 1984. Judy is happily married with two children. She, Mutti and I became close friends.

Kea
lost all her family. She became an art teacher, married an Indonesian and lives in The Hague.

The final words are for
Heinz
and
Pappy
.

On 8 August 1945 a letter from the Red Cross arrived at our apartment (at about the same time that Otto learned that Anne and Margot had died in Bergen-Belsen). It said that after the forced march from Auschwitz, Heinz had died of exhaustion in April 1945 at Mauthausen.

Pappy, who could not have known that Mutti had been saved or that I would survive the terrible ordeal, probably gave up hope and died three days before the end of the war.

They have no graves. Their names are engraved with hundreds of others on a memorial monument in Amsterdam.

This is also their story.

The first time Otto Frank paid Eva and me a visit in Amsterdam after our return from Auschwitz I could see that he was broken-hearted over the loss of his wife, Edith. On the trip from Auschwitz to Odessa he had heard that she had died from exhaustion and starvation in January, just before the arrival of the Russians. But he still hoped, as we did for Erich and Heinz, that his two daughters would return.

When he next came, several weeks later, we had already heard that our dear ones had perished in the Austrian concentration camp of Mauthausen, and he had received the news that Margot and Anne had died from typhoid fever in Bergen-Belsen. We were all acutely depressed. I didn't know how I could carry on. Erich had always organized everything for the family and now, without him, I felt lost.

On one of Otto's visits he told us that Anne had written a diary while in hiding. Everybody had known about it even though Anne never allowed anyone to read it. She had also written children's stories and would occasionally read one of these to her family and their friends. Miep Gies had found her papers in the Franks' hiding-place and had taken them to her office and kept them there. She hadn't read them and intended to give them back to Anne if she returned.

After it was known that she was dead, Miep gave the manuscript to Otto. It took him a long time to read as he found it such an overwhelming emotional experience. When he finished it he told us that he had discovered that he had not really known his daughter. Although, of course, he was on good terms with her, he had never known anything about her innermost thoughts, her high ideals, her belief in God and her progressive ideas which had surprised him greatly.

He read parts of the manuscript to Eva and me, and Eva told him that she had always had the feeling that Anne was much more mature than she, and that was perhaps the reason why she did not get very close to her.

‘If I could meet her today,' she said, ‘we would understand each other much better as I have changed such a lot after all my experiences.'

Otto Frank helped to build up the Liberal Jewish community in Amsterdam by becoming one of its board members. He attended the then rather primitive rooms of the synagogue when it was started up and very often he took me along to the Friday evening services. As we had all lost so many Jewish friends we liked to meet up with Jewish people and talk with them about their lives during and after the occupation.

He also worked hard at his business, which had to be built up again. He was determined to give those good friends of his who had risked their lives in helping to hide the family the reward of a secure existence again — and in this he succeeded.

When Anne's
Diary
was published in Holland it became a tremendous success and soon offers from other countries came pouring in. Otto kept me informed about all these events and I remember that once, when I went to England to visit my parents and my sister, he came along with me to talk to a London publisher. We went by train and boat, and on the trip he gave me more of the material to read.

As time went on I became his confidante and, in turn, I took my problems to him. I told him about Heinz and how he had been such a gifted boy. At the Lyceum and then at the Jewish School he had proved to be a brilliant student. If he were shown a musical instrument he could simply pick it up and play it. In hiding he had painted pictures and written poetry — and also taught himself Italian so that he could read Italian books.

Having gone through the same experiences, Otto and I found that we had a lot in common and he also took an interest in Eva. When he was chosen, as Holland's representative, to attend the conference of the World Union of Progressive Judaism in London, he took Eva along to represent Dutch Jewish Youth.

I often invited him to go to lectures and concerts with me. During Eva's last year at the Lyceum, we decided that she should choose photography as her profession and she got an apprenticeship at a photographic studio where she would go several afternoons a week. But on the whole Eva was no longer happy living in Holland, it had too many sad memories for her. She decided that she wanted to go to England to perfect her skill in photography.

Now that I was on my own, and as Otto and I grew more and more fond of each other, we decided to marry and move to Switzerland where his family lived. Our wedding was in November 1953 and the marriage, which lasted until Otto's death, was very happy for both of us.

I helped him with his work, answering all the letters he received after Anne's
Diary
had been published in many countries. Together we went to visit Anne Frank Schools and publishers and we received many young people who had read the
Diary
and wanted to meet Anne's father. Over the years Eva and Zvi had three lovely daughters whom Otto adopted as his grandchildren. They too loved him dearly.

So, by the tragedy in both our lives, together we found new happiness.