S. Samuel
Eva Schloss, sister to late holocaust victim, Anne Frank, recently spoke out on modern day tragedies associated with worldwide prejudices and the recent murder of 17-year old Florida student, Trayvon Martin.
When asked about the killing of Trayvon Martin by self-proclaimed neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman, the 85-year-old Holocaust-survivor-turned-humanitarian told SOHH.com that cases such as Martin’s are not just limited to our nation’s backyard.
“Cases like these happen in England too”, Schloss exclusively told SOHH. “We have nearly every week that a young person is knifed down, usually black people, because of racial discrimination. This has to stop. We just have to accept that people are of different religion, different colors, and [are] all equally valuable citizens.” (SOHH)
Schloss lost her stepsister, Anne Frank, and many other relatives to the extremities of racism during Hitler’s reign and was taken into captivity on her 15th birthday and held captive at an Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. She went on to tell SOHH.com what she feels needs to be done to prevent more incidents like Trayvon’s, as well as her hope for the newer generations.
“Plenty, plenty, plenty of work [needs] to be done. But we are going forward. Lots of young people are realizing that it is an evil to have discrimination. And again, there is still a black president and apartheid has crumbled in South Africa — that is a big step forward. This is something that we couldn’t have imagined 10-15 years ago,” Eva told SOHH. She went on even further to explain, “We are moving in the right direction. But it is something we all have to work on together, that is what Obama says, we can’t do it alone. We all have to work on it.” (SOHH)
In the meantime, Trayvon Martin’s case is one that has heightened racial tension throughout the nation and has sparked concern from many petitioners.
“From Facebook to Twitter and online petitions, local police and prosecutors are getting tens of thousands of demands for criminal charges as the national media shines a spotlight on a small, racially diverse central Florida town with a history of police tension. There are now more and more calls for the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene and try to answer: What really happened to Trayvon Martin?” (Miami Herald)
In 1999, Scholoss, along with the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, signed the Anne Frank Peace Declaration and has since then joined forces with those who fight to bring an end to racially-rooted violence. Her stepsister, Anne Frank, is one of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust whose memoir, The Diary of Anne Frank, tells the backstory of her family’s persecution during Hitler’s anti-semitic reign in Europe.
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