Samuel Steinmann

Personal

Passions

Notable

Norwegian Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. After the deaths of Julius Paltiel in 2008 and Hans Levold in 2009, he was the last Jewish Norwegian who survived the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. Steinmann's family was thrown out of their home on 21 September 1942 by the Schutzstaffel. One month later, on 26 October, he was apprehended by the Norwegian police as part of its campaign to arrest male Jews, and put in the Berg internment camp. On 26 November, together with approx. 531 other Jews, he was deported by the SS Donau to Auschwitz. The ship left the harbour at 14:55. They arrived at Auschwitz at 9 PM on 1 December. Women, children, and the aged were gassed to death immediately upon arrival. Steinmann's brother Harry had an accident while working, in January 1943, and was deemed unfit to be of further use, and thus exterminated. In January 1945, as Soviet troops approached Auschwitz, the 60 000 prisoners were evacuated and sent on a death march toward Wodzisław Śląski. In Geliwitz, Steinmann was eventually ordered to board a train, which headed to Buchenwald. In March 1945 when the White Buses came to Buchenwald to bring the Scandinavian prisoners back home, Steinmann and the other four Norwegian Jewish survivors were denied departure by the Germans, who didn't consider them Norwegians. When the Jews in the camp were seized and executed next to a quarry on 6 April, Steinmann and the others escaped death once more by dressing themselves in uniforms of non-Jewish prisoners and hiding. Steinmann and the others were rescued on 11 April by the Americans. He arrived back in Oslo on 30 May 1945, and was allowed to go see Quisling sitting imprisoned in a cell at Møllergata 19, the main police station. His father came to pick him up and they went to Sweden where his older brother and the rest of the family had resided. They later returned to Oslo and their former home. On 27 January 2012, on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, prime minister Jens Stoltenberg issued an official apology on behalf of the Norwegian government for the treatment the Jews in Norway received during World War II. Steinmann was awarded the King's Medal of Merit (gold), on 3 May 2012. A portrait of Steinmann was unveiled in the ceremonial hall of the University of Oslo, 72 years after the deportations, on 26 November 2014. Steinmann died on 1 May 2015 in Oslo, Norway, age 91. He was buried at state expense. https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Steinmann