Sonja Steinhart
* 1923

Sonja Steinhart, born on 20.7.1923 in Hamburg, murdered on 23.9.1940 in the killing center Brandenburg an der Havel

Sandweg 42, (Eimsbüttel)

Sonja Steinhart was born in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel as the second child of Amalie, née Löwenthal (born 13.2.1887 in Hamburg) and Nuta Steinhart (born 10.5.1882 in Bendzin in Silesia/ today Będzin in Poland).

Sonja's father is listed as Nuta Sztainchart in the Hamburg Jewish Community's cultural tax file; thus, the family was considered Polish. From Poland, where his parents, Rikla, née Bilka, and Jakob Aaron Sztainhart lived in Soszowice, he had moved first to Hanover in 1908 and then to Hamburg after marrying Sonja's mother on March 28, 1913. He worked as a watchmaker.

Sonja's maternal ancestors can be traced back many generations. Her grandfather Hermann Löwenthal, with whom Sonja grew up, was born in New York on July 15, 1857. His mother Pauline, née Hirsch, born in Hamburg, was descended from the poultry dealer Heymann Salomon Hirsch and Betty, née Moses, born in Peine. His father David Levy Löwenthal came from Ovelgönne, Duchy of Oldenburg, was a merchant and lived with his family in Hamburg's Neustadt in the Lazarus Gumpel Stift, Schlachterstraße 44. Hermann Löwenthal had settled in Hamburg as a watchmaker and jeweler together with his younger brother Martin (born 29.5.1860 in Hamburg) and registered his trade as a watchmaker at Elbstraße 22 on November 22, 1884.

Both developed a close family and certainly a business relationship with the Abraham Freyd family. The latter was active as a pawnbroker in the gold and silver trade, among other things. Sonja's great-grandfather Abraham Freyd, born in 1841, came from Lodsel, Russian Poland, his wife Sarah, née Cohen, from Posen. The family had lived for a time in Glasgow, Scotland. In 1870, at the age of 14, Sonja's grandmother Fanny Freyd had moved to Hamburg with her parents and her younger siblings, also born in Glasgow, Rebecca, born in 1863, Michael, born in 1867, and Isaac, born in 1869.

Hermann Löwenthal married Fanny Freyd on March 12, 1886, in Hamburg. On September 1, 1887, his brother entered into marriage with Fanny's sister Rebecca Freyd. Daughters were born in both marriages. Sonja's mother Amalie was born in Hamburg that same year, and Martin and Rebecca Löwenthal's daughter Paula was born at 68 Johnsallee, Hamburg-Eimsbüttel, on September 3, 1895.

Both brothers, and thus their families, were admitted to the Hamburg State as citizens on October 20, 1897. One month earlier, in September 1897, Sonja's great-grandfather Abraham Freyd and his family members had joined the Jewish Community of Hamburg. Abraham Freyd died on June 4, 1902, and a year later, on June 30, 1903, his wife Sarah Freyd also died. They were buried in the Langenfelde Jewish Cemetery. Two years after Sonja's parents married in Hamburg on March 28, 1913, Sonja's grandmother Fanny Löwenthal, née Freyd, also died on October 11, 1915. She, too, found her final resting place in the Langenfelde Jewish Cemetery.

On June 26, 1918, Sonja's widowed grandfather Hermann Löwenthal expanded his business and registered as a dealer in jewels, watches, gold and silverware, optical items, antiques and art supplies at 109 Fruchtallee. Sonja's father Nuta worked there in the commercial department. That same year, on November 20, 1918, Sonja's sister, almost five years older, was born in Hamburg. She was given her first name, Fanny, after her deceased grandmother.

Around 1923, Sonja's grandfather Hermann Löwenthal moved his watchmaking business to Weidenallee 8, Hs. C II.

Sonja grew up with her parents, her sister, and with her widowed grandfather Hermann Löwenthal at Sandweg 42 in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel.

The date of Sonja's enrollment in school is not known, nor is the name of her school.

Sonja's grandfather's watch store was doing well and was visited by many non-Jewish customers. This changed with the boycott of Jewish businesses by the National Socialists on April 1, 1933. Gradually, many customers stayed away, and the family's economic situation became more difficult. In addition, the family suffered from the increasing discrimination.

The premises of her grandfather's store in Weidenallee, where Sonja's 16-year-old sister Fanny worked as a sales apprentice, had to be given up and the workshop moved to the Sandweg apartment. The family was forced to make do with the ever-decreasing earnings, and the domestic help had to be dismissed.

Two months before her twelfth birthday, on May 4, 1935, Sonja Steinhart was admitted to what was then the Alsterdorfer Anstalten. A medical record that could provide clues about Sonja's state of health and the circumstances of her admission has not been preserved. Only in the admission book is the note "feeble-mindedness with St. Vitus' dance" noted. St. Vitus's dance, medically called chorea, with its characteristic movement disorders is a symptom of several diseases with different causes, courses of disease, therapeutic procedures and chances of cure. Diagnostic options were limited at the time, and accurate determination of the disease was difficult.

Sonja Steinhart spent the next three years in the Alsterdorf Institutions. We do not know whether she learned what was happening in her family during this time. By 1936, she was living almost entirely on the proceeds of her valuables. On January 1, 1937, Sonja's grandfather Hermann Löwenthal had to close his store. The family had lost its livelihood.

According to records in the cultural tax file and statements made by Sonja's sister Fanny after the war, Sonja's father returned to his hometown of Bendzin, Poland, on November 27, 1937, with his family holding Polish citizenship through him. There they lived on his small earnings as a representative of a lottery business and on the support of relatives. Probably around this time Sonja's brother Rudolf, called Reuven, was born there. Sonja's sister Fanny completed an apprenticeship as a hairdresser and began working.

Meanwhile, Sonja had stayed behind in Hamburg at the Alsterdorf Institutions. Her grandfather Hermann Löwenthal also continued to live in Hamburg.
With the increasing exclusion and persecution of the Jewish fellow citizens, the "transfer" of the Jewish residents from the Alsterdorf Institutions also took place. In the course of this, Sonja Steinhart was transferred to the Langenhorn Sanatorium and Nursing Home on April 12, 1938.

During the night of June 16-17, 1939, Sonja's grandfather Hermann Löwenthal, who by then lived at Rappstraße 10 ptr. near Petrover, died. He was laid to rest next to his wife in the Langenfelde Jewish Cemetery.

Sonja's father was murdered in Bendzin during the invasion of Poland by the German Wehrmacht. Sonja's sister Fanny later reported that Gestapo officers had taken him from the house on September 9, 1939, and shot him in the street.

For Sonja and her Jewish fellow patients, the Nazis' inhumane racial policy combined with their "euthanasia" plans took a fateful course. When the order was issued to round up Jewish patients from Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg at the Hamburg-Langenhorn Sanatorium and Nursing Home on September 18, 1940, she was already on site. On September 23, 1940, her transport left for Brandenburg at river Havel to the so-called Landes-Pflegeanstalt, where the arrivals were killed with carbon monoxide on the same day. In order to conceal this murder, death notices claimed that the persons concerned had died in an asylum in Chełm (Polish) or Cholm (German) east of Lublin.

Sonja Steinhart lived to be only 17 years old.

Her family was also almost completely wiped out by the Nazis.

Her mother Amalie Steinhart was deported from Bendzin to an extermination camp together with Sonja's little brother Rudolf (Reuven) and murdered.

Paula Zeckel, née Löwenstein, Sonja's great cousin, had emigrated with her husband Abraham Zeckel to the Netherlands, where he worked as the director of a sewing factory in Rotterdam. They were deported from the transit camp Westerbork to Sobibor on April 23, 1943, together with their 16-year-old son Wolf Hendrik Zeckel and mother-in-law Henriette Goldschmidt, born in Hildesheim on January 16, 1869, and murdered.

Only Sonja's older sister Fanny Steinhart survived the Shoah: after internment in the Bolkenhain, Merzdorf and Schönberg labor camps, she was deported to the Grünberg concentration camp in Silesia, where she had to work for the "Deutsche Wollwaren Manufaktur AG", which had uniforms manufactured in a textile factory there. Together with her fellow prisoner Cilli Königsberg, she managed to escape on a death march to Weissenfels in Thuringia in January 1945. American troops liberated them shortly before the end of the war. Because of their poor health, both were taken to the Katz Sanatorium in Stuttgart-Degerloch. During a one-year stay in Italy, financed by UNRA, they regained their strength. Fanny emigrated to Palestine in 1946, married there and lived in Tel Aviv as Fanny Goldschmidt.

Tranlation Beate Meyer