Erich Emanuel Steinitz

Erich Emanuel Steinitz was born in Munich on August 1, 1895, the son of the businessman Ludwig Steinitz and his wife Emma, née Kalmus. He grew up with his sister Hertha, who was three years his senior. His father died when he was three years old. Erich’s widowed mother Emma Steinitz and her brother-in-law Georg Steinitz became partners in a silk and linen goods business with a factory for ladies’ hats and corsets. From 1907 onwards the Jewish family lived at Marienplatz 24. Erich attended the Humanistisches Gymnasium and then went on to receive training at the Munich Handels-Hochschule (commercial college). He entered military service shortly before the end of World War I and fought at the front.
After the Nazi accession to power, the Steinitz family was subjected to ostracism, persecution and dispossession. In late 1940, Erich, Emma and Hertha were forced to leave their home on Marienplatz and move to a so-called “Judenwohnung” (“Jews’ apartment”) at Goethestrasse 74. Emma Steinitz died of a stroke there on April 2, 1941. On November 20, 1941, the Gestapo deported Hertha and Erich Steinitz to Kaunas in Lithuania along with some 1,000 other Jewish men, women and children of Munich. Five days later the entire group of deportees were shot to death there by SS troops. (text Barbara Hutzelmann, Editor C. Fritsche, translation J. Rosenthal)