Her modesty, gracefulness and soft voice don’t suggest it, but Eva Schloss’s encounter with darkness has instilled in her a determination to tell the world her story.

A childhood friend and, posthumously, a stepsister of Anne Frank, Schloss, now 84, recounted her Holocaust experience to two packed auditoriums locally — on Jan. 22 at USC’s Bovard Auditorium and on Jan. 23 at CSU-Northridge’s University Student Union. The two Los Angeles events drew about 1,600 people and were organized by the Chabad Centers at the presenting schools. They were the final events of Schloss’s two-week California speaking tour.