The school marked Holocaust Memorial Day during our senior school service on Friday 23 January. Assistant Head, Mr Grant, spoke about the life of survivor, Eva Schloss, who died earlier this month, and her work to remember those from her family that were killed, including her stepsister, Anne Frank. Because of its history, the city of Norwich has a particular responsibility to challenge antisemitism. Yet, as antisemitism grows – in Britain and around the world – Jews remain particularly vulnerable. Eva Schloss’ witness reminds us of the importance of remembering Holocaust victims as individuals to help ensure the evil of the past does not resurface.

Isaiah, 56, verse 5

To them I will give within my temple and its walls
    a memorial and a name
    better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
    that will endure forever.

"Eva Schloss was 96 years old when she died recently on the third of this month. Most of her life, she had lived in London where she’d arrived in 1951 to study photography. Yet, for decades, Eva had been haunted by nightmares, memories of her early life.

Born in Vienna to a prosperous family, she was very close to her mother, Elfriede, her father, Erich, and her anxious but talented older brother, Heinz. She remembered happy times skiing in the Austrian mountains as a family. This ended abruptly in 1938 when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany. This upended Eva’s life because Eva and her family were Jewish. To avoid persecution, they moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. There, Eva befriended another girl of the same age called Anne. Anne was from a neighbouring family who were also Jewish. Eva remembered that Anne had a nickname, Miss Quack Quack, as she never stopped talking.

But Amsterdam did not provide the safety these two families needed. The Netherlands too was invaded by Germany in 1940. With no escape possible, the families faced growing restrictions on their lives. Eva remembered Jews being barred from the cinema. She was upset that she couldn’t watch the Disney film, Snow White. To cheer her up, her brother, Heinz painted cardboard versions of the seven dwarves for her to play with. Indeed, Heinz increasingly focused on his painting to pass the time, especially once the family were forced into hiding for months to avoid the tightening persecution.

Heinz became increasingly worried about what would happen, but their father, Erich, assured him that, whatever happens and however long we live, our lives are important and the things we do in them won’t be forgotten.

The family’s hiding place was betrayed and the four of them were deported to the death camp, Auschwitz, in May 1944.

Next Tuesday is Holocaust Memorial Day, the 81^st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945. Eva’s father, Erich, and her brother, Heinz, did not survive; two of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. It was only through luck that Eva and her mother lived.

On their journey to Auschwitz, before the family were separated – over three days in a dirty, cramped cattle truck - Heinz had grown increasingly miserable; he had told his sister that he had hidden his paintings beneath the floorboards in the house in Amsterdam. If Eva survived, she should find them.

Returning to Amsterdam after the war, Eva and her mother adjusted to life without the other half of their family. They encountered the father of the girl, Anne, with whom Eva had been friends. His entire family had been killed: Anne, her sister and their mother had all died at the Bergen Belsen concentration camp.

The remains of these two shattered families united in their shared grief, Eva’s mother married Anne’s father. His name was Otto Frank. He became Eva’s stepfather and encouraged Eva’s interest in photography. Posthumously, therefore, Anne Frank became Eva’s stepsister.

Otto discovered Anne’s diary hidden in their house. Eva discovered Heinz’s paintings under the floorboards. Each would do what they could to share these with the world; to ensure, as Eva’s father had promised, that, despite their brief lives, Anne and Heinz would not be forgotten. Heinz’s paintings remain on public display today. Anne Frank’s diary remains the most widely read testimony from a Holocaust victim.

Anne had died aged just 15. Eva – born in the same year - had 81 more years of life than her stepsister, the span of a good life itself.

Yad Vashem is the world’s Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. It aims to record – by name – as many of the six million victims as possible. Yad Vashem, in Hebrew, means ‘a memorial and a name’. It was inspired by the verse from the prophet Isaiah that we have just heard.

After 81 years, there are fewer and fewer survivors to testify to what happened as the terrible events of the Holocaust fall out of lived memory. Gradually, those lights – like Eva – that, since 1945, have shone brightly to illuminate the world’s ignorance, are starting to flicker and go out. What is left? The names of those who were killed risk fading into the darkness of an unremembered past.

I’ve noted before that Norwich has a particular responsibility to challenge antisemitism – the hatred of Jews. It was here in the Middle Ages that the blood libel originated; the lie that Jews killed Christian children, and this lie spread through Europe justifying persecution. Recently, the Dean of this cathedral has been working with the local Jewish community to consider the most appropriate ways of acknowledging this dark, difficult, distant past.

Yet, in the modern age antisemitism is not distant. It is growing again, both in Britain and around the world. A malign mixture of racism and conspiracy theory, antisemitism creeps easily into the minds of the ignorant and the hateful. The spread of misinformation, the rise of extremism and the dangers of radicalisation – all stimulated by a lawless and irrational digital realm - mean that Jews remain particularly vulnerable. The last two years have seen the highest number of antisemitic incidents in Britain. In October two Jews were killed at a synagogue on Yom Kippur in Manchester. More families broken. More names to be remembered.

In a BBC interview towards the end of her life, Eva admitted that she was pessimistic about human nature, that cruelty was ingrained within us. Perhaps she was right. Yet, there is a quiet, defiant power just in remembering. Anne, Heinz, Erich. Eva Schloss devoted the last four decades of her life to ensure that these names would not be forgotten. In those words again from Isaiah, she aimed to give them an everlasting name that will endure forever."