No Asylum: The Untold Chapter of Anne Frank’s Story

World Premiere Film and Discussion

No Asylum, directed by Paula Fouce, is the dramatic and tragic story of Otto Frank’s desperate attempts to secure American visas before going into hiding with his family in 1942. Based on recently-discovered letters by Otto Frank in YIVO’s archives, No Asylum interviews Anne Frank’s surviving family about his efforts to seek refuge for his family through friends, refugee boards and the U.S. State Department. No Asylum is followed by a conversation between Paula Fouce, Eva Geiringer-Schloss, Anne Frank’s stepsister, and Jonathan Brent, YIVO Executive Director.

Otto Frank’s letters and materials from the YIVO Holocaust collections will be on display.

YIVO is a co-producer of No Asylum. 

About the Participants

Jonathan Brent is the Executive Director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City. From 1991 to 2009 he was Editorial Director and Associate Director of Yale Press. He is the founder of the world acclaimed Annals of Communism series, which he established at Yale Press in 1991. Brent is the co-author of Stalin’s Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953 (Harper-Collins) and Inside the Stalin Archives (Atlas Books). He is now working on a biography of the Soviet-Jewish writer Isaac Babel. Brent teaches history and literature at Bard College. 

Paula Fouce is President of Paradise Filmworks International, and a critically acclaimed filmmaker and author. Her films include Not in God's Name: In Search of Tolerance with the Dalai Lama (PBS stations), Song of the Dunes: Search for the Original Gypsies (PBS stations), Naked in Ashes, and Origins of Yoga. Her book Not in God’s Name: Making Sense of Religious Conflict (Paradise Filmworks International) explores solutions to religious intolerance, and includes an interview with Mother Teresa. She co-authored the book Shiva (Orchid Press) with Denise Tomecko. 

Eva Geiringer-Schloss is a Holocaust educator, lecturer and survivor. In 1940, Geiringer-Schloss’s family escaped from Austria to Amsterdam, Holland, where they met the Frank family. Following the German invasion of Holland in 1942, her family went into hiding. In May 1944, Geiringer-Schloss was captured by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz where she was liberated by the Russian army with her mother in January 1945. Since 1986, Geiringer-Schloss has been active in public Holocaust education, speaking in schools, universities, prisons and public meetings. She is co-founder of the Anne Frank Educational Trust in the UK and author of Eva’s Story (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co), The Promise (Penguin UK), and After Auschwitz (Hodder & Stoughton). Geiringer-Schloss received an Honorary Doctorate in Civil Law from the University of Northumbria in 2001, and from the University of York in 2004 for Education. In 2008, the U. S. House of Representatives honored her in the Congressional Record, and in 2012 Geiringer-Schloss was awarded an MBE by Prince Charles for Holocaust Education.