Settela Steinbach

Settela Steinbach in a wagon to transport to the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau (May 1944).

Anna Maria "Settela" Steinbach (born December 23, 1934 in bays near Sittard (NL); † between July 31 and August 3, 1944 in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp ) was a Dutch Sintiza who was brought with her family by the National Socialists to the Auschwitz extermination camp was deported and murdered there. Her photo from the transport to Auschwitz was initially regarded as a symbol of the persecution of Dutch Jews, until in 1994 the journalist Aad Wagenaar researched that she belonged to the Dutch Sinti. Today it stands for the genocide of the European Roma .

Life

Anna Maria Steinbach was born in Buchten (near Sittard-Geleen ) as the seventh child of the trader and violinist Heinrich (Moeselman) and Emilia (Toetela) Steinbach, who had a total of ten children. On May 16, 1944, she was arrested in Eindhoven during a nationwide arrest campaign against " Gypsies " in the Netherlands . On the same day, she and 577 other victims were taken to the Westerbork transit camp . 279 were released after it was found that they were not classified as "Gypsies" according to the racist , "blood-like" categorization, even though they lived in caravans "Gypsy style". On May 19, Settela was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp together with 244 other Roma . Rudolf Breslauer , a Jewish prisoner in Westerbork who made a film on behalf of the German camp commandant Albert Konrad Gemmeker , took Settela on. Crasa Wagner, who was sitting in the same freight car, heard Settela's mother call her name and warned her not to stick her head out of the opening. The picture shows a girl with a headscarf: Settela hid her bald head after a shave that was felt to be degrading.

On May 21, 1944, the transport reached Auschwitz-Birkenau. The deportees were registered and imprisoned in the " gypsy family camp ". Those judged to be fit for work during the “ selection ” were deployed in the industrial complex of IG Farben ( Auschwitz-Monowitz ) belonging to Auschwitz and in external commandos with the aim of “ extermination through work ”. The remaining 3,000 were killed by gas between July and August 3 . Settela Steinbach, her mother, two brothers, two sisters, her aunt, two nephews and a niece belonged to this group. Of Settela's family only the father survived, who died in 1946 and was buried in Maastricht .

After the end of National Socialism, Rudolf Breslauer's seven-second film sequence was used in numerous documentaries. The image of the unknown young girl looking anxiously out of a carriage on a transport to Auschwitz became a symbol of the Nazi mass crimes . The misinterpretation of the picture as a deportation of the extermination of Jews is related to the fact that the Porajmos received little attention for a long time.

In December 1992, the Dutch journalist Aad Wagenaar began to research the girl's identity. From details of the wagon, especially from the numbering and the discovery and assignment of a single suitcase that appears in the film, he determined that the transport must have taken place on May 19, 1944. Evidently it was not a mixed transport of Dutch Jews and Roma. On February 7, 1994, Crasa Wagner, who lived on a woonwagenbewoners square in Spijkenisse and had survived Auschwitz, revealed the identity of Settela Steinbach. Woonwagenbewoners are a marginalized social group in the Netherlands (also disparagingly called kampers , preferred self-name: Reizigers ), which arose around the middle of the 19th century from impoverished strata of the Dutch population, including a not inconsiderable proportion of Westphalian immigrants, and as the internal group language Bargain , speaks a Dutch-based red dialect.

The search for Settela Steinbach's identity was traced by Cherry Duyns in his documentary Settela, gezicht van het verleden (1994). Wagenaar published the results of his research in a book.

literature

• Rob Hendrix / Marouska Steinbach, Hetkret van de Heksenberg. Settela en Willy, Heerlen 2017, 2., verb. Ed.
• Aad Wagenaar: Settela, het meisje heeft hair naam terug . ISBN 90-295-5612-9 .
• Aad Wagenaar: Settela (English edition 2005). ISBN 0-907123-70-8 .

Web links

• Settela Steinbach (deathcamps.org)