Eva Schloss, a Holocaust survivor and posthumous stepsister of Anne Frank, will be visiting Cincinnati in January.
Schloss, whose mother Elfriede Geiringer was Otto Frank's second wife (both of their spouses died in concentration camps), will be at the Holocaust & Humanity Center at Union Terminal on Jan. 26.
There she will speak with HHC CEO Sarah L. Weiss for the museum's third anniversary at its new location (the HHC relocated from its former headquarters in Kenwood to Union Terminal in 2019) and to honor International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which takes place Jan. 27.
The conversation will begin at 7 p.m. and will be streamed on Zoom.
“It is a rare opportunity for Cincinnatians to be able to hear Eva’s firsthand account of her experiences,” Weiss says in a press release. “We look forward to her visit to our museum and city as we commemorate our third anniversary at Union Terminal.”
Schloss was born Eva Geiringer in Vienna in 1929. In 1938, she and her family fled Austria after Germany annexed the country. They sought refuge in the Netherlands and were former neighbors of Anne Frank and her family in Amsterdam. According to the HHC, Schloss and her family went into hiding during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, like the Franks, and were "later betrayed and sent to Westerbork Concentration Camp and then to Auschwitz II-Birkenau." Schloss's father and brother died in the camp.
In addition to speaking with Weiss, Schloss will be recording her story for the HHC's exhibit Dimensions in Testimony. Dimensions in Testimony invites attendees to have virtual “conversations” with Holocaust survivors via artificial intelligence.Visitors can pose questions to two-dimensional displays of survivors and receive appropriate responses in real-time. Utilizing natural language processing, Dimensions in Testimony selects keywords in the visitor’s question and the searches through hours of testimonial footage for an appropriate response. A section is then played so that the survivor answers the visitor’s question and cultivates a “conversation-like experience.”
The exhibit was developed by the USC Shoah Foundation. According to Stephen Smith, executive director of the foundation, the project intends to preserve first-hand accounts and provide a two-sided dynamic between Holocaust survivors and future generations.The Holocaust & Humanity Center is located at 1301 Western Ave., Queensgate. Register to attend the free conversation with Eva Schloss at 7 p.m. Jan. 26 either in person or virtually at holocaustandhumanity.org. Proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test is required for entry.
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