UTW 71

The Martyrdom, by the Third Reich and the church, of Anna Maria Settela Steinbach of the Netherlands, a ten year old Sinti.

Art: 2019
Media: Ink, gouache, colored pencil
Framed, 21 ¾ H x 25 ¾ W  

Settela (Stella) Steinbach, Dutch, Sinti heritage, b. Dec. 23, 1934. On May 16, 1944, police arrested Romani and Sinti throughout the Netherlands. She was initially held at the Westerbork transit camp. She was transported with 244 other Romani and Sinti to the Auschwitz death camp on May 19. She was filmed looking out of a train car at Westerbork (which was proceeding to Auschwitz) by a German Jewish prisoner, Rudolph Breslauer (b. July 4, 1903). A photographer by trade, as a slave laborer at the Westerbork transit-death camp in the Netherlands, the Nazi administrators ordered him to take photographs and to make films for the Nazi camp officers.  Stella was murdered at the Auschwitz death camp on July 31, 1944. Breslauer was murdered at the Auschwitz death camp on February 28, 1945. 

In addition to Stella, her mother, two brothers, two sisters, an aunt, two nephews and a niece were also murdered. Her father alone survived.

Initially thought to be Dutch Jewish, Stella’s family identity was made by an Auschwitz survivor, Crasa Wagner, who was deported in the same train car. Wagner identified Stella in 1994. An info page about Settela in the Holocaust Memorial Day (UK) website.

Of the photographer and filmmaker Breslauer’s family: He, his wife and two sons were murdered. Their daughter Ursula survived.