Inside of the concentration camps, there were many stories during the Second World War that
were never told and have been forgotten.
Millions of people succumbed to the evil conditions, executions and killings inside of camps such
as Mauthausen, Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz.
At the camps many of them had gas chambers and as soon as people arrived at camps, selection
would take place and because of this many hundreds of thousands of people were killed
as soon as they got to the camps.
They never got to enter the gates of the camps and within minutes of arriving there many
people were dead.
Many people from around the world were sent to Auschwitz, from many occupied lands and
many other countries.
But inside of Auschwitz, there was an Irish woman who was killed there.
She is remembered as one of the only Irish jews killed in the concentration camps.
Join us today as we look at the tragic killing of Ettie Steinberg, and remember to support
our channel, please make sure to subscribe.
Inside of Veretsky in Austria Hungary in January 1914, Esther, Ettie Steinberg was born to
Aaron Hirsh Steinberg and Bertha Roth.
The family left Austria Hungary in 1925 and then moved to Dublin Ireland.
She had a large family which included 6 singling and they lived at 28 Raymond Terrace in the
Irish capital.
They then went to school nearby, and it’s assumed that Ettie had a normal upbringing
in Ireland.
When she left school she became an apprentice seamstress in one of the best places in Ireland,
and she was described as being brilliant at her job, saying she had golden hands and was
great at being a seamstress.
But inside of Dublin, Ettie met and fell in love with a Belgian Goldsmith named Vogtjeck
Gluck.
He was also working in Dublin and the couple then got married in the Greenville Hall Synagogue
in Dublin in July 1937.
The couple then following their marriage left Ireland and returned to Vogtjeck’s homeland
of Belgium so he could work on his goldsmith business.
Their marriage its believed was very happy, however as the Second World War broke out
across Europe, Ettie and her husband were under significant danger and threats.
The war broke out with Hitler’s invasion of Poland on the 1st September 1939, but it
was clear that he would not stop with just taking Poland.
Hitler’s plans to create a huge empire would see him invade numerous countries and initially
have lots of success taking France also.
But Belgium also fell under occupation and despite being neutral at the start of the
war, Belgium was invaded on the 10th May 1940.
After 18 days of fighting the Belgian forces were pushed back, and the military then surrendered
to the Germans.
The country was occupied until 1944, and inside of the country many of the horrific Nazi policies
were imposed on the people.
Living under Nazi occupation was tough, and many Belgians were involved in armed and passive
resistance, and a number did collaborate with the Germans.
But the Nazis also persecuted the Jews inside of the country.
It’s estimated that around 25,000 people were killed inside of concentration camps
after being deported from their homes.
Many people had fled to Belgian to escape persecution from other countries such as Germany
itself, and many Jews were based inside of Brussel and Antwerp.
Persecuting laws were brought into force in October 1940 which restricted people’s freedoms,
and then in Antwerp a number of pogroms and large scale deportations and arrests were
orders and occurred.
Germans were raiding Jewish homes and seizing people, and of the 25,000 people deported
from Belgian cities, it’s claimed that less than 1000 were alive by the time the Allied
forces liberated the camps.
There was even a concentration camp and torture centre established inside of Belgian known
as Fort Breendonk.
This was near to Mechelen, and was a former WW1 fort which was then used by the SS for
detaining and interrogating Jews, political prisoners and members of the resistance.
Around half of the people sent here were killed from the brutal torture and executions that
occurred there.
Ettie Steinberg and her husband were subjected to the persecution.
Because of this the couple decided to move to France where they believed they would be
safer.
Which in France Ettie gave birth to a son named Leon, and the family then moved around
different parts of France until they settled in the south.
But in 1942, the Nazis in the south of France began to start rounding up jews and then deporting
them to concentration camps.
With this Ettie and her family were in a huge amount of danger, and her family to help in
Dublin sent Visas meaning the family would be allowed to travel back to Ireland to escape
once again the threat of Nazi persecution and death.
However, the day before the visas arrived, Ettie and her husband had been arrested by
German forces, and they were then quickly process and placed on a train destined for
Auschwitz.
It’s probable that Ettie knew what was happening, and that she knew what would happen when she
arrived at Auschwitz.
On the long train journey to Poland, she sent a coded message back to her family in Ireland,
and she wanted to thank them for their efforts to save her life.
The letter said, ‘Uncle Lechem, we did not find, but we found Uncle Tisha B’av.’
She then threw this letter out of the moving train in the hope it would be sent to her
family.
Luckily a passer by found the note and then posted it to Dublin.
The message she sent was deciphered, and it made its way passed censoring officials.
Lechem is the Hebrew for bread, and Tisha B’av is a Jewish fast day which commemorated
the destruction of the temple.
With this, her message can be translated as, ‘We did not find bread, but only destruction,’
commenting that she did not prosper in France and was quickly rounded up by the German officials.
When her family received this, they must have known that the visas did not arrive in time,
and that the couple had been arrested.
Ettie’s family then began to try to search for her and to discover if she was still alive
and what happened.
They wrote to the Red Cross and even the Vatican to try and see if they could help track her
down.
However these were of no use.
They later found that the Gluck family, as in Ettie, her husband and son were on a list
of records stating the transportation locations of Jewish prisoners.
First Ettie had been transported with her family from Drancy outside of Paris which
was an internet camp.
Here prisoners were processed and then they were sent to larger camps.
Following arriving at Drancy, the couple were then sent on towards Auschwitz.
When Ettie and her family arrived at Auschwitz, they would have been offloaded from the trains
which carried thousands of people.
After getting here, SS guards, doctors and members of staff then carried out selections.
If they believed there was anything wrong and even a small scar on the prisoners then
they would be sent to their deaths.
Selections made the decision as to who would live and enter the concentration camp, and
who would be killed straight away.
Only those fit enough to work would be allowed into the camp, and the rest would be executed.
Ettie, her son and husband it’s believed never made it past selection.
When they arrived, they would have been left behind in the yard, and following this would
have been transported to the gas chambers.
Many women and their children were killed straight away, and it’s likely that this
would have gone against Ettie.
Following this when they arrived at the gas chambers they would have been forced to underdress
under the guise of taking a shower, but as the chamber was loaded up the gas would be
administered.
Ettie Steinberg today is considered one of the few Irish victims of the Holocaust and
of the concentration camps.
When she was in Dublin she had the world at her feet, and was a talented young woman who
would have been a very successful seamstress wherever she went.
Her husband was also a skilled goldsmith, but as the Second World War arrived on their
doorstep, much horror and evil would come their way.
They were a family forced to move a number of times until the Nazis finally caught up
with them, and when they arrived at Auschwitz they were killed immediately.
Ettie Steinberg today is remembered as one of the only Irish women killed during the
Holocaust.
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